Identity
by Carbon65
Summary: This is just one more placement in the long line before he dies or turns 18, which ever comes first. He is not going to engage. He is not going to let them touch him. He is not going to share his secrets. And, he is most certainly not going to let anyone know the boy underneath the mask. Not even himself. Hunter AU. TW: Sexual Assault; Self Harm
1. Chapter 1

**"Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you." **  
― George R.R. Martin, _A Game of Thrones_

He shouldn't be nervous, not really. There is no reason for his stomach to flip with fear as he watches the cabbie unload all his earthly possession – one large rolling duffle, one footlocker with a combination lock, one day pack and a laptop case. There's no reason for him to lose his breath as he pulls the money from the black leather wallet to pay the cabbie. No reason to be nervous as the man, who smells like sweat and vinyl and stale cigarettes and ginger, hands him a pair of matte black ring crutches. There's no reason to be afraid. This is just another first day at a new place. Just another classroom. Just another set of adults to hurt him or nag him, just another set of boys to mock him. This is just another group home. Another hospital. Another foster placement. Another summer camp. Another school. It's his fourty-third in not quite sixteen years. You'd think he'd be use to it by now.

The cabbie thanks him for the generous tip, and leaves quickly.

It's not the most frightening place he's ever been (that goes to the children's hospital in Phoenix with its lurid Pepto Bismalt pink walls, visiting clowns and overly friendly doctors), but it still feels imposing. A tall gray building half way between a victorian mansion and full castle rises against the blue-gray clouds. A few crispy leaves swirl on the pavement, caught in a cold mid September breeze. This is his first time in Ohio, and he's surprised at how damn cold the state is. He's glad for the worn black leather bomber jacket around his shoulders.

He pauses for a minute, trying to figure how to carry his things into the school. It's midmorning on a week day, and the front drive of the campus is deserted. Off in the distance, he can see blurs of crimson and navy moving in a circle around what he assumes is a sports field. He really needs to get a new prescription for contacts. He's left with a predicament. He can't - he won't - leave his things just sitting on the driveway in front of the school. But, he also can't carry them in. He's supposed to be gentle with his ankle for another few days, until the swelling goes down. And then a few weeks of physical therapy. God, he hates his stupid body. He hates the stupid predicaments it puts him in. He hates his mother, for doing this to him.

He sighs. There isn't much of a choice. He fishes in his laptop bag and pulls out his phone. It's a dinosaur, a prehistoric relative to the smart phones everyone else seemed to have. Unlike him, and the newer phones, this one is damn near indestructible. It's survived nearly four years and fifteen placements with him. It's as familiar as the battered black trunk and the crutches.

He opens his wallet, looking for the card they'd given him. He glances at his Driver's license to remind himself again who he is supposed to be. Hunter Clarington. Seventeen. Ex-military academy student.

That, at least is true. He had liked Colorado, as long as it had lasted. Then, things had gotten fucked up, and he'd had to move once again...

_A/N: Okay, I _know _I said "No more WIPS" but, Hunter has been driving me crazy. Like, to the point where I've been needing to write this so badly that I've been itchy. This will likely be AU. Probably very different from a lot of my other stuff… more in the same realm as _Battles Waged Quietly _than anything else. Thus far, I have no pairings… _

_Let me know if you think I should continue, or corral Hunter, shove him in my ginormous closet and let him have a cage match in there with the rest of my characters._


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn't expect to recognize the boy who comes out with a cart to collect him and his things. Even with his shit eyes, he has a good memory for faces and names. If he wasn't born with an innate talent for recoganizing people, he's honed the skill over the years. It seemed critical to his survival to be able to identify people from his past. This creates a new level of complication. He hopes the boy will not recoganize him. They've both changed a lot in the past nine years.

"Charlie?" The tall boy with spiky hair and a big smile offers his hand.

Oh shit.

"Charlie! You probably don't remember me. I'm Jon. We met at Riley's in Indianapolis."

The trouble is that he _does _remember Jon, Riley's, and Charles Adam West (Charlie to his friends) with crystal clarity. He'd been seven and terrified. His parents were long gone, his Granddad dead, and his older sisters had been doing whatever the hell they'd been taken with at the moment. It had either been African drumming, horseback riding, or Ritalin. So, he'd been alone, terrified, and in pain. It wasn't the first time he'd been in the hospital, and it sure as hell wouldn't be the last. But, it had been his first time alone.

He remembers being a little shit: refusing to go to bed or eat or remain in his room, so he was probably an unholy terror. In his defense, he'd been seven and in pain. He hadn't learned to cope with the pain until later. Honestly, he hasn't completely learned to cope with pain. But, ten years of practice has certainly improved his skills. So, after three days of ramming every wall on the floor with his wheelchair and reciting the Team Rocket theme twice a minute and refusing to eat anything but butterscotch pudding or raspberry jello, the doctors, nurses, and physical therapists were at their wits end with him. (He was enough of a Jello conosour that the could taste the difference between the different flavors of _red _jello. Or, at least, he could taste the difference between cherry and not cherry jello).

Jon and his father had arrived in a blaze of fear, transformers, Christian rock and rules which cut through his pain, sugar and pokemon induced daze. Jon's father ("You can call me Mr. Tom, Charlie") refused to put up with any of his bull. He'd refused to pity for his son's roommate, refused to listen to the bald-faced lies. Mr. Tom had also been the first person to notice that sat too close to the television and didn't pay attention to things unless there was sound or movement. Mr. Tom had helped him find glasses, and let him see. It had been one of the most amazing moment's in his young life. They'd had seven days together in the hospital room alternating between Ash Ketchum, Bumblebee and Adventures from the Book of Virtues.

After a week, Sarai and Lara had descended like avenging angels or birds of prey. They'd spirited him away in the night, told him to forget all about Mr. Tom and Jon and Charlie West. And, he had, until he met Jon again.

"Nice to meet you, Jon," he says, taking the boy's hand and pushing down the nerves that come from contact. "I'm Hunter."

"Sorry, I must have confused you with someone else I knew when I was younger." Jon's smile is easy and bright. He moves to pick up the trunk and load it onto the cart.

"Careful!" The word slips out before he can stop it.

Jon frowns, but he carefully lifts the trunk onto the cart before loading the duffle and computer bag. "What's in there, a body?"

"Almost." The word again slips out before he can stop it. Although, considering the contents, it's not far off from at least a few body parts.

"You're in third annex," Jon says, wheeling the cart past a massive marble staircase toward the elevator. "I'll take your stuff up and leave it with Seb. You go ahead to the office."

He frowns.

"Second door on your left." Jon reads the expression on his face quickly. "And, Seb's your roommate. He's not bad."

He can't help but wonder what "not bad" means. He's had a smattering of roommates over the years, who varied from dreadful to tolerable. He doesn't get a chance to ask, as Jon pushes his things down the long marble hallway and toward the elevator. He gathers his courage and walks into the Dalton front office.


	3. Chapter 3

There are four kinds of admission interviews. He's been on all of them. They range from horrendous to boring. They also tell him a lot about the place.

The first takes place in a bare office. There are usually locked file cabinets along the wall and two chairs facing each other across a heavy metal desk. They take his paper file (always a paper file, never an electronic one; the paper is easier to modify, but computer files show tampering) and everything else he owns and lock it up. His medical supplies get passed to a concerned looking nurse who will later make him strip and give him a cursory medical exam. He'll be reminded of the rules. He'll be warned not to touch anything or anyone. He might be lectured about actions and consequences. Then, he'll be sent off to shower and change into whatever horrible uniform they've issued.

The second involves a concerned team of people. It's held around a conference table. There's a social worker and a doctor and and a principle and a parent and an over-burdened caseworker. They flip through his (paper file) and make notes. They let him keep his things. They let him keep his medications. They tell him to come to them with any problems. They promise that someone will be checking on his progress. Then, they examine him closely and find none of the signs that are there.

The third occurs in an office with old furniture, cinderblock walls and cheap bookshelves full of tomes on education. Things with pretentious titles like, "The educator's guide to difficult children" and "Reaching everyone". It's just him and the principle. There are no things to be taken, nothing to be issued, just warnings to follow the school rules and keep his head low. This is his favorite type of interview.

The last happens in a place like the Dalton front office. The walls are paneled in dark wood and the bookshelves are a mix of antique leather bound things, photographs of successful alumni and educational journals. His things have already been taken care of; the discussion will be about his potential and how he can give back to the school and how it can help his future. It's a lecture he's heard before.

He lets the headmaster explain things, making appropriate responses when they're warranted. No, he doesn't play contact sports, so he doubts he'll be much help on the lacrosse field. The Glee club sounds interesting, but he may simply focus on his schoolwork. He lets the school make whatever assumptions they want about his dress, his record and his injury. He does agree to go see the school nurse at some point, to pass along his vaccination records. Those, at least, haven't been falsified. His Granddad insisted that he get all his shots, and his sisters had to comply or fear being written out of the will.

He hasn't actually checked, but he's quite sure that Hunter Clarington has never been through admissions interviews at the first two types of places. Hunter Clarington doesn't seem like the type of boy to go to a reformatory. Of course, he never thought he was either, until Sarai and Lara decided that it was just what he needed. But, he can be this person. He can be Hunter Clarington. And, maybe, just maybe, he can forget that he ever was anyone else.


	4. Chapter 4

A short boy with floppy brown hair and somber brown eyes greets him as he leaves the office. "I'm Nick."

Nick's handshake is firm, and somewhat more confident than the rest of his appearance.

"We've got an hour until lunch. Do you want to go upstairs and get settled in or go to the nurse?"

The question takes him off guard. He isn't used to everyone knowing his business. Most pretentious prep schools take student privacy very seriously, meaning that people's personal eccentricities and visits to various professions are rumor, not fact. Other places, your personal details are discussed openly only as punishment: loss of privacy as a loss of privileges.

He decides to challenge with a question of his own. "Why aren't any of you in class?"

"Free Period." Nick has a pleasant laugh. "Beatz has a free period because he doesn't do gym."

"Beatz?" The name catches him off guard.

"Jon Boxer." Nick is more subdued, his eyes hinting at a secret. "He's the beatboxer for our acapela group, the Warblers. We're sort of like rock stars on campus."

"I can only imagine," he retorts dryly.

He suspects that Dalton has a normal level of experimentation for high school students. Given that its a mostly closed campus and the population is, as far as he can tell, 100% male, that likely means a great deal of internal experimentation. This isn't his first all-male environment (that was Shady Oaks correctional institute when he was twelve and still pretty), nor does it have the highest population of gay inmates that he's ever seen (The Way!TM Bible-based Conversion Therapy Camp receives that honor… an irony since he'd never actually shown any romantic interest in men before or after Sarai decided he needed to go), but he imagines that if the Warblers are half as boy-next-door attractive as Nick and can sing reasonably well, they must be as popular as the jocks at Dalton.

Nick continues, oblivious to his reverie. "And, I interned as a page over the summer. Between that and Boys State, the Powers that Be waived my government requirement. So, I spend my forth period studying and running errands for Dr. Dick."

"I see." He decides that he likes Nick. "In that case, I'd rather go unpack. Jon said I was in third annex? With Seb?"

"You're fucked." Nick tells him, an affectionate grin across his face. "I lived wth Sebastian last year. Rule one, never call him 'Seb.'"

He closes his eyes, and balances himself against the wall of the elevator as the rickety old car ascends. He can feel his left shoulder swelling with the exertion of the morning.

This Sebastian person can't be as bad as Rick, Adam, or even the original Hunter Clarington. He doubts he'll need to sleep with a knife under his pillow (although he has one if he needs one) or be sent out on drug runs. He doubts Sebastian will try to steal his clothes, his food, or his medication. But, he's prepared for anything.

He doesn't mention the pain as Nick leads him off the elevator, and down the wide carpeted hall. "Welcome to the third annex, home of the Dalton seniors."

Nick introduces him to Scott, the assistant rector, who passes him a key ring, ID card, and a square of Dove chocolate. Scott seems to have an un-ending supply of sweets. Scott also produces a large cardboard box, neatly addressed to Hunter Clarington in handwriting that can only be Lara's. His sisters knows what he needs, even if he doesn't. Part of him hates them for knowing more about his life than he does, part of him is thankful that they handle the pesky details like uniforms and sheets so he doesn't have to pack them.

As they walk slowly toward his room, Nick observes that Scott is fundamentally a good guy. When Thad got David ridiculously drunk last year on Smirnoff Ice, and David sang "Twist and Shout" in his boxers and a bowtie during the Alumni Fundraising Dinner then stumbled into Scott's bed, still entirely drunk, Scott had simply ushered the boy back to his bed and given him a bucket. No paperwork had been filed against either boy (beyond the campusing that David received for scaring the alumni).

They moved down the oak paneled hallway, past identical wooden doors topped with transoms. These give a peak at the personalities of the residents. A union Jack with the southern cross peaks out the top of 315. Nick indicates it as his room, and explains that his roommate is an encouragable Aussie. Another window is papered with cutouts of girls from magazines. This, apparently, belongs to Roberto, the Resident Advisor.

He's finally lead to 323, with it's plain black paper. This suits him fine.

Nick knocks, but no one answers. The brunette frowns, and tries the door. It's open.

The two enter the open room. His things are stacked neatly beside a bed, the pack resting across the matress.

Nick drops his cardboard box. "Sebastian?"

A moan emerges from a lump under the navy duvet on the other bed.

"Sebastian, this is your new roommate, Hunter."

Another moan, and a middle finger salute. He's relatively sure there's something in there about key somethings, but he's not sure.

Nick shrugs, wishes him luck, and goes off to do whatever he normally does for his independent study.

He sinks onto the blue floral mattress for a minute, and drops his crutches. Ignoring his roommate, he calls Sarai.

She answers on the first ring.

"I'm here," he greets her in French. He and Lara are the only people who ever call Sarai at this number.

"Congratulations." His older sister's voice is dry. She's subtly chastising him for being such a baby and even needing to call.

"I got your package."

"Don't forget to put everything away."

He wonders what his sisters have sent beside sheets. He wonders, for what is likely the millionth time in his life, what they have planned and what they are doing with him.

"I won't."

"And don't hesistate to call if you need anything."

"I won't."

"We'll see you at family week."

"Okay."

"Love you, Brat."

"Love you, too, Bitch."

They have an odd relationship, but his sisters are all that he has. And, he's not sure he would have it any other way. They're meddling busy bodies, but they're possibly the only people in his life, aside from his granddad, who have ever cared about him. At least, that's what Sarai and Lara have always told him.

He knows he should use this as an opportunity to unpack. But, he's damn tired. He's damn sore. And, he's damn sweaty.

He leans his crutches against the headboard, and kicks off his shoes. He carefully releases the Velcro on the AFO on his left foot, adding the molded black plastic brace and the black brace sock he wore underneath to the growing pile beside his bed.

Then, he closes his eyes and leans back on the mattress. Just let Dalton assume that Hunter Clarington a lazy, arrogant, and rich. Don't let them guess that he's scared, alone, hurt, and in pain.

_A/N: I'm sorry that this has taken me so long to get out. I've had Hunter dancing around with this since … Wednesday? Thursday night? Anyway, he's been banished back to my closet temporarily and I'm off to do my homework. ... I feel like I should mention that this may or may not intersect with the Warbler Chronicles that I've written, but it's not a part of them. So, Sebastian _is _diabetic, and Jeff _is _Aussie. But, the rest, I'm not so sure about. Remember, review are love!_


	5. Chapter 5

Over the years, he's woken up to a lot of awful sounds. Snoring was frequent (most notably that of Simon Parks, who he once measured at 50 decibels). There had been a fair number of bugles, most off key, between the various camps and military academies. Old Mr. Prescott in New Hampshire swore by sermons. So, there had been more than one occasion where he'd come to with a pastor shouting about hellfire and brimstone. Mrs. Walsonski in Michigan had played "soothing" animal sounds. And, that's not to mention the assortment of alarm clocks, radio stations, hospital pages and mechanical beeps he's been subjected to. But, he wakes up to what might possibly be the worst sound in the world.

"Is that… Rebecca Black?"

His roommate is naked, oblivious, and rocking out to 2010 and looking forward to the weekend (weekend). It almost makes him wish for a camera phone for blackmail purposes. It's no wonder no one is willing to live with Sebastian if this is the show he subjects people to every day.

He doesn't think he can endure another two minutes of the tween's inane song.

"Sebastian?"

His roommate continues his mostly naked dancing. He can now make out a faint white patch on the boy's hip, like a drug delivery system.

"Sebastian!" He's getting exasperated at the lack of response.

He lunges across the room, toward the iPod playing the offending noise (he's not sure it qualifies as music). Of course, he's forgotten his bad ankle. Well, his bad joints, really. Even when they're not injured (sprained, strained, or hot), it doesn't mean that they're strong or necessarily behave normally. And, his knees and ankles are the worst. It's something he can't escape no matter what identity he assumes.

He makes it a step and a half before he trips over his abandoned shoes and brace. Ironically, it's the brace that causes his "good" leg to collapse under him.

"Fucking _viarge. Verdammte scheibe! C'est le bordel_!"A string of profanities in a mix of his three languages slip out. He's perfected swearing to an art. It doesn't matter that Hunter Clarington is as WASP as they come, or that he's never spent time in Quebec or studied German (Hunter had studied classical French, Latin, and Arabic before his unfortunate demise). The words are reflexive, though, and they comfort him.

Sebastian turns at the racket. He's tall and surprisingly good looking, with sharp features and green eyes. "_No pettes de plumbe_."

He's so surprised to hear someone respond in French that he almost _does _shit lead.

The tall boy comes over, thankfully wearing pants at least, and offers him a hand up. "You fell pretty badly."

"I was trying to turn off that… monstrosity you're listening to." He lets Sebastian help him back to the bed, but it takes all his will power to do so. He doesn't want to be touched. People touch you before they try to hurt you.

The tall boy switches off the iPod, a crease wrinkling his brow. "You could have said something instead of … whatever you just did."

"Got up to turn it off?" His words are bitter. "And, I did. You sort of ignored me."

"Only child syndrome." Sebastian is frank as he turns away to pick up his shirt. "I have selective hearing."

He uses the opportunity to examine himself. His side is sore where he fell against the plastic braces, and his side is wet. The cuts are superficial, but when he presses on the skin it hurts. He's going to have a sunrise on his side in the morning. He presses the shirt against the cuts, anyway. He needs all the help he can get clotting.

His knee hurts, but at this point, he can differentiate between a sprain, a strain, a bleed and osteoarthritis. He's had too much practice. A strain or a sprain. More braces. More time on crutches. Damn it.

S

Sebastian wanders back into the bathroom or closet to find his jacket and tie.

He limps around the bed to the footlocker, careful about his shoes on the floor, and gingerly lowers himself. He undoes the combination, opening the black trunk. The small soft sided cooler he sets aside to be put in the fridge. The plastic case of IV lines he chucks up on his bed. He may need them later. He shifts the shallow tray of various medical paraphernalia (bandages, a sharps container, antibacterial wipes, more IV lines, plastic sutures, a sling and a rogue bottle of acid green nail polish – Sarai's idea of a joke). Underneath is his horde. The bottom of the chest is filled with more than twenty grand in orthopedic supports: orthotics to fit in his shoes, braces of varying heights and support levels, padding and brace socks, a cane or two (one house-style with flames), and a number of prescriptions for physical therapy and wheelchairs with the name and birthday left blank. Forget every bad thing he's ever said about his sisters. They know what he needs.

He wriggles out of his pants with a practiced motion. He's no stranger to pain or swollen joints. He wraps his knee in a compression bandage to stop swelling and bruising, then slips into a full leg immobilizer. He feels more steady as he carries the cooler over to the little fridge and stores the IV bags of factor VIII and O-negative inside. The vials labeled "Testosterone" and "HGH" he finds inside the box from his sisters joins the blood products and vials of Novolog he can only assume belong to Sebastian. There's also a lonely slice of cheesecake and a half-finished bottle of blue Gatorade which just looks sad admit all the medical supplies.

Back on the bed, he pulls on a pair of new gray pants and a white shirt. As the clothes settle around him, he feels himself slipping into the persona of Hunter Clarington, trust fund baby and Dalton Academy student. With Sebastian's tie tightened to a Windsor knot at his neck, the mask falls into place with an iron click. Soon, it will be as though he never was anyone else.

_A/N: I speak neither French, nor German. And, my favorite Spanish swears don't fit here. But, it's hard to pass up the opportunity to research profanity. If you __**are**__ a speaker of French, German, or Quebecois (since local profanity differs, I'm considering them different genres of swearing), and I've screwed up, I'd love input…_

_Additionally, I promise that (1) Hunter is not being gaslit (gas-lighted?) and he _has _had to assume all the identities he claims and (2) It's not all in his head (although that would be a weird sort of story._


	6. Chapter 6

It's lunch that almost undoes him. He can pretend to be cold and hard and unfeeling with the best of them. He can hold himself stiff and aloof. He's done it for years; he wears the separation like armor. But, the Dalton boys handle him an unassuming gentleness he can't ever remember. They handle each other with the same gentleness. It's like they actually care. It's been years since anyone, except maybe Sarai or Lara, genuinely cared about him.

"Long and less crowded or short and packed?" Sebastian slings a bag over his shoulder and adjusts something on his belt.

He doesn't really consider. "Less crowded is better."

It doesn't matter that he'll be more tired, or that he hurts. He doesn't want to put up with the stares. The headmaster might have said something about an anti-bullying policy, but he knows the difference between policy and reality. His last school had a No Smoking, No Drugs and No Alcohol policy. The school in West Virginia where Maribeth Commings had …, well, there'd been a policy about sex there. And, it's not like the school can ban the stares or the pitying looks or people avoiding his eyes. The looks are worse than any words.

They take the elevator down to the basement in silence, and Sebastian leads him through a maze of concrete-walled corridors. On their way, he spies a bank of mailboxes, a vending machine, and what looks like a well-equipped kitchen. Beyond that, he's mostly lost.

"Confused, yet?" Sebastian slows his pace subtly.

He shrugs.

"It gets better."

"I know." He feels his shoulder shift, and orders it to stay in its socket. As if ordering his body to do things has ever worked. Maybe the long way wasn't as good of an idea.

They arrive at a second elevator, and Sebastian stabs at the button. "We just went through the tunnels. We're in the new student center."

"There are tunnels?" A grin spreads across his face. He imagines the possibilities for winter. No more falling on ice. No more trying to protect his hands from the cold. They could have used tunnels in Canada or Minnesota.

Sebastian gives a one-shouldered shrug as they get into the elevator. "Yeah. I don't really know the history, you could ask Nick about it."

The elevator doors open at that moment to show Nick trying to wait through a crowd of younger boys. Up ahead, Jon stands with a blond who is shaking his head.

"Oi! Niko!" The blond has an Australian accent.

Sebastian takes a different tact to pass through the roiling mass of tweens. "Scram!"

The middle schoolers scatter, making a path for the three older boys.

"Someone started a rumor that Sebastian got kicked out of the American School in Paris for stabbing a second grader with a spoon when she got between him and a bowl of ice cream." A round, baby faced boy appears at his elbow, laughing.

He finds himself chuckling as well.

"Trent, this is Hunter. Hunter, Trent." Nick makes the introductions, the lightest hint of a drawl creeping into his voice. If he had to guess, based on manners, he might say that Nick was raised in the south, or raised by southern parents. There's just something about him.

The blond bounds over and launches himself at Nick. He latches onto the brunette's neck, and then kisses his cheek.

"Babe, we're in public." Nick blushes a little, even as he kisses the boy back.

Jon and Trent usher him into the dining hall. Without asking, Trent picks up two trays from the stack by the door. He can tell they're still a little hot and damp from the dishwasher. Without asking, Trent follows him through the line, putting whatever he indicates on the tray. And, without asking, Trent leads the way to the table where Sebastian, Jon, Nick and Jeff are already sitting.

The blonde and brunette are close enough that they touch while completely ignoring their partner. Jeff asks Sebastian how he's recovering, and then launches into a five minute mini-lecture on … something biology related. The two quickly descend into the realms of biology. Trent complains to Nick about economics, and Nick makes sympathetic noises. Something about the independent axis _always _being horizontal and needing to flip graphs. And people being stupid.

Jon doesn't say anything. He just studies the new boy, watching him eat his lime jello. It's a little creepy.

He tries to ignore it. He engages Jon in conversation. "So, do you like Transformers?"

The beatboxer's eyebrow almost hits his blond tips. He's suspicious all over again.


	7. Chapter 7

He's in pain, but he focuses on the food rather than the ache in his legs. Just because he's constantly dislocating, spraining and straining his joints, it doesn't mean that it hurts any less when it happens than if he'd never done it before. Possibly, it hurts more, because there is residual damage. The difference between him and someone healthy, someone who didn't grow up in and out of hospitals, rehab facilities and clinics, is that he's been living with the pain for so long that normally he can block it out at some basal level and function. Because he has to.

Nick's … friend notices, somehow. The blond is ridiculously perceptive, or else he's known someone with a chronic pain disorder before. Maybe both.

After a complicated series of plate switching ("to confuse the dish washing robots"), Jon, Nick and Trent take the trays up to the dishwashing window.

"Seb, Hunter, you're with me. We're going to the nurse, or we're going to A&E. Your choice." The blond has a barely muted Australian accent.

"I'm sorry, but beyond the fact that you're clearly a koala lover who mauls people's necks, I don't know who you are?" Snark is a way to calm the pain.

"Bloody bastards, koalas." The blond grins. "I'm Jeff Sterling: token Aussie, nick's boy, and current Warbler medic."

He wonders for a moment who or what the Warbler are, and then remember the headmaster's spiel about the glee club.

"Well, Jeff, don't you ever go to class?" He's honestly curious.

Sebastian shrugs. "If we're not sick. Which I am."

Jeff raises an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure chronic illness doesn't excuse you from attendance."

"Yeah, but the fact that I've got a low grade fever and I'm spilling ketones again does." Sebastian is frank and crytic.

Jeff smacks him, and holds out a hand, snapping his fingers. "Give it, mate."

Sebastian sheepishly hands over a liter water bottle, which Jeff goes and fills.

"I'll be fucked if you don't finish that in the hour." The Aussie turns to him. "I've got study hall this hour. Well, technically college prep where I'm supposed to practice writing essays and that shit. Except that my essays are in review right now and there are only so many times I can fill out paperwork saying that I've got my green card. So, I'm on idiot-sitting duty."

Sebastian rolls his eyes, childishly, but he drinks some of the water.

"So, we're going to the clinic." Jeff makes the pronouncement matter-of-factly. "Do you want me to steal you a wheelchair, Hunter?"

His pride lets him hesistate for all of thirty seconds. His shoulder is on edge already, and if it dislocates, chances are pretty good that it will come with a bleed. He's been playing the odds already and the house is stacked against him. It would stuck to be taken to the hospital on his first day, to be wrapped and scolded and kept overnight for observation and then end up with his dominant hand in a sling for a week while his shoulder heals to some degree.

"Sure," he agrees.

Sebastian drains the water bottle while Jeff goes to borrow a wheelchair. "Sometimes, my body decides it hates me," he volunteers.

He shrugs. He knows all about bodies that hate their owners. He practically grew up in hospitals.

"Well, actually, my body once decided it hated itself. And so it destroyed that part. And every so often, things get fucked up and it eats itself. Usually when I'm sick. Or my medicine gets fucked up. Or…"

The pause hangs pregnant in the air between them.

Jeff comes back with the wheelchair. It's one of the hated collapsible hospital variety: silver frame, navy blue vinyl seat, ungainly wheels and handles on the back. He's filling the prescription for a proper wheelchair as soon as he can. It's embarrassing to have Jeff wheeling him down the hall like an invalid, and Sebastian carrying his crutches.

He's surprised at the proximity of the nurse's office. He knows that Dalton is a relatively small school, maybe 400 students between grades 7 and 12, but that doesn't prevent the school from occupying huge grounds. Still, the nurse is located in the next building over, a relatively modern structure built within the last decade (they go outside to get there), which apparently serves as a dorm for some of the younger boys.

It's actually almost a proper clinic, complete with a lab and a small onsite pharmacy. The nurse on duty, who tells him to call her Anne, is a competent, maternal sort of woman. She's a certified nurse practioner, which puts him at ease. The fact that she's more competent that many doctors he's met makes him even more comfortable.

She shoos Sebastian into a bathroom with a urine sample cup and then tells the lab tech to start an IV to the tall boy. Then, she turns her attention to him.

He has to give it to Anne, she doesn't flinch when he passes over the copy of his medical file (carefully doctored to be in Hunter Clarington's name, but with his real information in it). He used to keep a proper manila folder, like doctor's offices use, but at some point, the folder started to break down. Now, he keeps everything in a three-ring binder. This one has 2" rings and is divided into section with colored tabs. She just asks if he needs help getting up onto the bed or changing into the gown.

She does an initial examination, probing where she finds not only the cuts along his side, but the fading bruise on his back and the fresh scar on his arm. He was supposed to have arrived at Dalton on Monday, but there had been … complications in Chicago. She examines his knee, his ankle and his shoulder. Here is no bleed, yet, but she wants him to do a round of prophylaxis.

He knows the look in Anne's eyes. He knows he's going to be staying over night, and monitored.

He's certain that Dalton Academy will soon come to the conclusion that he's more trouble than he's worth, and send him away. That's what almost every other place has done. But, for now, they're treating him like a human being, asking if he wants anything from his room while he's confined to the infirmary. He asks for his backpack. It has his tooth brush, a few pairs of clean underwear, his finger braces and his iPad. He knows he's going to be here for a while; he might as well get some reading done.

Anne inserts his IV with deft precision. He watches her; it's a procedure that's he's had carried out an uncountable number of times. He can insert his own, and normally he does, but he lets the clinic staff do it here. He trusts them to be gentle.

Sebastian is already hooked up to his own IV and muttering. They've taken away his water bottle and replaced it with saline. The boy is tired; it's clear in his every movement. But, he puts up a good fight. He swears loudly in English (it _does _help relieve pain). He calls quietly for his mother in French. And, just as he's falling asleep, when he's too tired to fight anymore, a few tears slip out. Jeff comes back to find Sebastian crying, and rubs his back until the tall brunette falls asleep.

He tries to read. He's working his way through _The Federalist Papers_ and _Common Sense_. But, his vision blurs as he gets more and more tired. Finally, he falls asleep, head lolling over his iPad.

_A/N: I promise to continue writing this. But, I'm about to start (another) major coding project, this one with __**real**__ computer scientists. And, for those of you who do/don't know, when I get into coding, it sometimes takes away from my writing. But, I know what's happening next here. (Although admittedly I'm a little surprised Hunter ended up in the infirmary so quickly, or that it's so awesome). This chapter is dedicated to/inspired by my absolutely awesome CNP, Deb, who took care of me at my last school and was an absolute angel. Anne is an homage to her. _

_Thank you guys for everyone who has reviewed/followed/favorited. I open up my inbox and feel the love. Which just makes me want to write this more._


	8. Chapter 8

He dreams about Hunter Clarington and Sectionals in Boulder last year.

"_Com'mon, Kell," Hunter wheedles. "It will be worth it. Billy and Evens are already gone."_

_Kellen Samuelson grinds his teeth. He hates it when Hunter calls him Kell. He hates his stupid sisters for giving him this stupid name. He looks pointed out the window of their hotel room, where rain streams against the dark windows. It's Feburary, and even though they're at a mile over sea level in Boulder, the weather is unpredictable. He supposes he should be thankful that it's been warm. Snow does hellish things to his joints._

"_No one will ever know." Hunter wheedles._

_Kellen glances up from his book. "I'll know, you'll know and the commandant will know. They tape our doors."_

"_How do you know that?"_

"_Because I'm not an idiot." Kellen buries himself back in _The Count of Monte Cristo_._

"_Well, neither am I. I stopped by his room fifteen minutes ago, when Bill and Evens left. I told him that I was getting ice, and that we were going to call it an early night since I have my thing and you screwed up your ankle."_

_Hunter's hemophilia is worse than his; the other boy takes a preventative does of Factor VIII every other night._

"_So?" Kellen challenges. He wants to see where this is going._

_Hunter sighs, dramatically, and flops on his bed. "I know you have a fake. And, if you have one, it's a shame not to use it. Besides, we're just going to a dorm party. What's the harm in that?"_

_Kellen thinks about the dorm parties he's seen in movies. "Dancing," he points out. "Drinking. Walking. Kegs. I dunno, all these activities seem kind of dangerous for two guys who can't seem to hold their bodies together."_

_They're roommates because, and only because, they both fill a certain minimum level of diversity required by the academy. They're a concession to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Two hemophiliacs at a military academy. Kellen isn't entirely sure what strings Sarai and Lara pulled to get him there, but he doesn't mind it so much._

"… _Don't you need to take your medicine, tonight?" Kellen still hasn't moved from the bed. _

_Hunter shrugs. "We'll be back by two, three at the latest. I won't be that late."_

"_Not that I'm going, but how are you planning on getting to where ever the hell it is?" Kellen glances up from his book, and looks toward the window._

_Hunter shrugs. "I'll call a cab. Hell, I'll walk if I have to. But, I'm not staying prisoner in this hotel room. Not tonight. We just won Sectionals. All the other guys are out celebrating, shouldn't we be there, too?"_

_Hunter makes a compelling argument. He's head of the Cadet Choir, and Kellen is a soloist. Not a lead, not yet. But, his baritone voice adds a flavor to the songs that they'd be missing otherwise. He's young, but his tone has settled into a manlier range than many of his classmates._

"_What did you have in mind?" He can't believe he's asking._

_Hunter grins and pushes back his trademark blond curls in a nervous gesture. The words are confident, though. "A frat party."_

"_Fuck, fine." Kellen slips a sheet of folded notebook paper into his book, and gets out of bed. He's dressed down for the night: just a few sporadic support devices, his boxer shorts and a worn Cadet Choir t-shirt._

_Hunter surveys his roommate. He's already pulling clothes from his travel bag. "You're gonna have to get dressed."_

_Kellen uses his finger splints to shoot Hunter a perfectly vertical bird. _

_He wriggles into jeans and a pair of light weight cloth ankle braces. They're enough to keep him from dislocating his ankle, or spraining it, but not so much that he can't move. They were designed for gymnastics, which Sarai had sworn would strength his muscles and teach him control over his joints. He feels confident enough not to wear his knee braces, even the soft ones, or anything on his hands beyond the finger splints that look like brass rings. _

_Hunter already has a dress shirt on over his t-shirt. It hides the permanent IV port in his shoulder pretty well. No one should be able to tell that Hunt connects to every few nights to give himself clotting factor. He pulls a red beanie low over his blond locks._

_Kellen pulls a clean t-shirt with the University of Colorado mascot screen printed on it, and a thick green thermal hoodie. He doesn't care if people see his port. He's already wearing the damn braces on his fingers. They're enough evidence of some sort of illness, even if they look a little like hipster jewelry._

"_Ditch your splints," Hunter advises. "They draw too much attention."_

_Kellen pulls the offending metal off his fingers, but leaves a few of the ring splints in his pocket. _

_They climb carefully out of their hotel window to join the waiting Bill and Evens. Kellen curses himself as his knee pulls, but stays in the socket. "Let's get a cab."_

_Evens sighs. "Can you manage a two block walk, Princess?"_

_Kellen frowns._

"_There's a free bus that runs from one of the satellite dorms to the main campus," Evens explains. "My brother is a sophomore here."_

"_Is he called Odds?" The words slip out before Kellen can help himself. He tries to repress his snark as much as possible, but sometimes, when he's tired, he can't keep the words to himself._

_Billy frowns. "Two blocks? You'll be fine."_

_The walk to the towering dorm buildings is more than two blocks, but Kellen keeps himself from saying anything. He concentrates on getting to the party in one piece. _

_Despite the bad weather, there are plenty of people traveling between the dorms and the main campus. Most are dressed for partying. A group wears white t-shirts and shorts. One girl has a pair of fairy wings strapped to her back. Its all Kellen can do to keep from staring. He's never seen so many girls with so few clothing before in his life. Even from a distance, he can tell that a few of the freshman girls are braless._

_After the crowded bus ride, filled with strangers and their conversation about classes and suitemates and professors and parties, the night falls into a blur._

_They end up at a house on The Hill. He knows they're on the Hill because Evens is quick to tell them all so. Evens also mentions that the rent in the area is astronomical, but it's the place to live._

_He promises to stay to let Hunter know when he wants to go back to the hotel, because they need to sneak back in together._

_He remembers Sarai's rules for parties, the ones she gave him when she passed him his first fake id: No more than two drinks. Never leave your drink alone. Never leave your friend alone. Never take a drink that you haven't opened, mixed yourself, or watched a bartender make. Nothing blue._

_He sits in a corner on a blue beanbag chair and listening to the music and wonder why in the hell anyone ever thought Dubstep was a good idea. The dance floor is crowded with pulsing, gyrating bodies and he thinks it would be all too easy for someone to hit him or brush against him and cause something to become loose. Hunter seems to have no such qualms._

_He uses his finger splints so he can open a beer. He drinks it. PBR tastes like cold piss._

_He watches Billy make out with one of the braless girls from the bus stop._

_He drinks another beer. _

_Evens pulls him onto the dance floor and insists that he show off his mad dance skills. He's okay in the center of the circle, with Evens beatboxing behind him and Hunter and Billy singing. He does a front flip. If he'd thought to bring his wrist splints, he would have walked on his hands, too. He bends into a complicated yoga pose, and then comes out. He has more stupid human tricks than most of the rest of them put together._

_He chats with a girl about an anthropology class he's not in._

_He drinks another beer._

_He watches Evens kiss a boy with gaged ears and glasses and a too-tight t-shirt for an obscure band. The pair moves into a room, lips and bodies still locked in an embrace._

_He decides to switch things up and tries the jungle juice. It's the lurid shade of a smurf, but he tries it anyway._

_Hunter comes and grabs his hand and pulls him outside. He can feel the tug all the way up his arm, but it doesn't hurt it just feels friendly. They sit under a portico, and someone passes around a pipe._

_Kellen's never smoked before. Hell, he's never smoked before. He remembers Sarai telling him that pot was an anticoagulant, that he'd better not ever touch it because it would make things worse. He remembers Lara blowing smoke in his face, and Sarai yelling at her. He remembers feeling sick the day Lara accidently gave him one of her special brownies. So, he takes a brief inhale before passing the pipe._

_A girl wearing nothing but spangles comes over. She takes his hand and pulls him into another room._

"_No." He says. "No, I want to stay here."_

_She whispers something soothing and seductive in his ear. _

"_Hunter." He tells her. He doesn't know why he says it. Maybe, just for tonight, he can be Hunter. He can be his cool roommate, instead of himself. Even though he's been more than a dozen people, he's not sure he's ever liked any of them._

_She whispers something else, and takes his hand. He can feel his wrist moving. She's stronger, or less gentle than Hunter was._

"_No," he says quickly, as she pulls down his pants. It isn't his first time, but he doesn't want this._

"_No!" He says, as her warm mouth cups his shoulder, and she marks him with a love bit. A love bit is just a bruise, just bleeding under the skin. _

_Someone forces him to his knees. They protest, and he feels the fizzing in his right knee. The one that means he's bleeding._

"_No! No! No!"_

_Her hand rests on his clavical._

"_No! Stay away! Don't touch me!"_

_He flails out against her. He flails out against everyone who is ever touched him._

"Easy mate." The voice is male and Australian. "It was just a dream. Easy."

His hand comes in contact with an IV line and tangles in it.

Slowly, he comes awake. His eyes feel like he's ground gravel into them, and his right knee is fizzing with pain.

Once he's conscious, it takes him a second to remember where he is, and who he is. He's Hunter Clarington. He's in an infirmary in Indiana. He's having a bleed in his right knee. He isn't sure if he's going to be okay.

_A/N: This was NOT the chapter I planned to write, which is okay. But, it's the chapter that got written. It's now 5 am, so I'm posting this and going to bed._

_In the interest of clarifying, He is Kellen who will assume Hunter Clarington's identity later. The real Hunter won't need it after a while, so, Kellen will take it, and get his wish of becoming Hunter. I'm not sure if I'm actually making any more sense. But, basically, He = Present day Hunter = Kellen. _


	9. Chapter 9

He's impressed by the efficiency of the Dalton infirmary staff in dealing with this latest crisis. Within fifteen minutes, he has a fresh bag of factor VII, his knee is re-wrapped, elevated and being iced. (It would have been quicker, but the infirmary was out of the clotting factor, so Jeff had to text Nick and ask him to bring it down from Sebastian and Hunter's room). Anne has supplied him with Tylenol which does very little to ease his pain, but is at least a kind thought. Someone supplied his with a hand mirror to take out his contacts, so now he's back to the thick black glasses. And, Jeff has come back to sit by his bed and ask him about his dream.

"Is everything okay?" The Aussie's words are gentle.

He motions toward the foot of the bed to avoid the question. "I suppose?"

Jeff reaches out and then brings his hand back and reaches out again. It hovers by the shoulder of the reclining boy, but it doesn't settle.

He's thankful for Jeff's self-restraint. Over the years, he's developed an aversion to human contact. Doctors and nurses touch you or let you touch them because they either want to examine you or hurt you. They probe the inside of your elbow, and then stick in an IV, or hold your hand so they can straighten your arm and pop it back in the socket (which hurts like hell). Boys only touch you to punch you, girls touch you to get themselves off or use your for their own purposes, and teachers touch you because they want power. The only people he can remotely stand touching him are Lara and Sarai, and its only because they started before he was too old to know better, and now its habit. But, the Warblers seem to like contact, if lunch was anything to go by.

"If you want to talk about it, most of us are good at listening." Jeff leans forward and rests his hands in his lap. He's shrugged out of his uniform, jacket and tie gone and his white dress shirt open at the neck and wrists. Most guys would have rolled up their sleeves, but the Aussie leaves them open and down. And, whether he realizes it or not, the silver-white burn scar just above his wrists shines like a beacon. "And keeping secrets."

He lets Jeff keep his secrets, and he keeps his own. Maybe someday, not now. Kellen had told Hunter his secrets, and now Hunter is dead (Long live Hunter Clarington). He's not sure he can expose or endanger anyone else by letting them in.

He settles back against his pillow. "Okay, Thanks."

The finality of the words hang between them like some invisible wall.

_A/N: You know how real life is sometimes pesky and gets in the way? Yeah, that happened this week to an almost inexcusable degree. If it makes you feel any better, I was __**thinking**__ about the Warblers when I had a few spare thoughts (and/or couldn't think about neurobiology any more). If I've been behind in PMs and chapters, I sincerely apologize. I will also try VERY hard to update this more regularly (I'd like to get to 5 days a week consistently). _


	10. Chapter 10

Sebastian rolls over and moans. "Jeff, I'm gonna hurl?"

The blond jumps up, athletic and graceful, and moves across to the other bed with ease. He pulls down a pink emesis basin, and holds in out for Sebastian. "Do you want me to call your dad?"

The only response is violent retching.

Jeff leans across the boy on the bed, and gently rubs his back, whispering things to him. Sebastian retches again, and liquid splashes into the basis.

He eases himself into a position that will give the pair more privacy: pulling his headphones out of his backpack and easing himself so he's facing away from the pair as much as he can. There's not a lot he can do, but he can try to give them privacy. It's something that Hunter used to do for him, when he'd wake up bleeding and screaming with his shoulder or hip loose in the socket and his demons closing in. It's one of the reasons, that despite ending up in trouble over the drugs and the cash, and everything, that Hunter was one of the best people he's known and he actually liked being Kellen Samuelson.

Of all the people he's been (Andrew, Scott, Adam, Ben, Charlie, Preston, Kellen, Bobby, Hunter, Anthony, Eric, Phillip, Kyle, Keith, Caleb, Jack, and Will), he hasn't liked many of them. He can count on one had those he did: Charlie, when he was seven, William Green when he was ten, Jack Finn the summer he turned twelve, and Kellen.

Charlie had been wild and lonely and Pokemon obsessed and in pain, but he had been innocent, and he had friends. It had been strange, because the first night Mr. Tom had made him go to bed, Charlie ahd yelled, "I hate you!" and by the last night, he was stretching and closing his eyes and begging to be tucked in. No one had tucked him in since his granddad, and no one ever would again. No one else would ever pick him up when he had nightmares and hold him. No one would tell him that Jesus loved all the little children, and that He was sending Charlie a special angel to watch over him. Charlie was pretty sure that his special angel was Mr. Tom. He was sure that Charlie was the last time anyone had loved him.

Will's life had been going well. He'd been with a foster family, and they'd kept him a whole school year. He'd been able to go to the same school, make friends. His foster parents, Jan and Brad, were kind to him. They were distant, maybe because he'd already developed that thin wall of protection around his heart so no one could hurt him, but they were kind. They treated him the way anyone should treat a ten year old boy. They hadn't used him. And, Jan and Brad had a couple of dogs: Rocky and Eddie, who had been dumber than dirt but gentle. Will remembered laying next to Rocky and whispering his secrets in the golden retriever's ear. Will Green had been the last time he'd been innocent.

He was Jack Finn for the month his sisters sent him to sick-kids camp for the last time. Misselthwaite Farm had been fantastic, despite it's dreary name. It was one of the few places, other than hospitals, where being sick was the rule rather than the exception. Even the counselors knew what it was like. He remembered Martha, the rosy-cheeked girl with a dark braid who taught cooking lessons and helped corral the ten year old girls and keep them calm, even as she slipped into a grand mal seizure. And, there'd been Collin, who hadn't let DMD stop him from telling epic ghost stories. And Dicken. Dicken was the counselor he remembered the most, though Dicken was the first adult (although the counselor couldn't have been more than twenty two) he'd ever met who had EDS. Jack had styled himself after the man, wandering around in his underwear and braces in the cabin, and learning the careful stretches that the older boy used. There had been marvelous things about camp as well: the sprawling garden where the campers grew roses and food, the way every night they seemed to have a different adventure, the sheer number of pranks that got played (everyone had laughed when the camp director's infamous lobster boxers had ended up the flag pole), the fact that they'd made the world's largest sunday in a child's swimming pool and they a boy called Carl who'd had leukemia on and off since he was three decided that he'd always wanted to go swimming in an ice cream sunday and the counselors decided that since it wasn't going to hurt Carl and everyone else had had their ice cream that they would let him... He'd been so angry when he'd ended up in the hospital over something stupid, and his sisters had pulled him out, and forced him to become someone else. Because Jack Finn had been the last time he'd felt normal.

And then there was Kellen. Fourteen-year-old-Kellen had entered the all boy's military academy at Colorado Springs with a chip on his braced shoulder, an angry glint in his eye, and a voice that was settling into a rich baritone. Kellen already had nightmares; he'd seen and been through more than any fourteen year old should. But, his life had always been that way. The brotherhood of the military academy was rough and tumble. Respect was bought with feats of physical bravery, intellectual prowess and stunning cleverness. Success was the name of the game, and everything was high pressure. It was the perfect way to lose himself. Living with Hunter Clarington had helped. Hunter was a year older, and in some ways, he was miles ahead of Kellen, but in others, he was miles behind. Hunter had enjoyed a childhood that Kellen could only dream of. The older boy had forced him out of his shell, had introduced him to girls who were as awkward as he was, had taught him to sing, and had ultimately died to save his life. Hunter was the second him he would ever remember having a best friend. And, even though he can't predict the future, he's pretty sure that Kellen will be the last him for him to have one.

"Hunter?" He jumps at the voice, even though he's not entirely used to the name yet. It's easier, somehow, though, to be Hunter than to be some of the others. He never really got used to being Anthony Starkers, for instance, and not just because it sounded like a bad porno name.

"Jeff said you were stuck here, tonight." Jon is approaching with a tray of food and a laptop.

He nods toward his propped-up leg. "Yeah, my knee started bleeding."

Jon frowns. "That sucks." He sounds distant, like he can't quite imagine what it would be like to have a bleed in his knee.

His stomach grumbles, and he realizes that he's hungry. "Is that for me?"

Jon shrugs. "I can't exactly give it to Sebastian. And, I though that even though you were here, you might want to be indoctrinated into the glorious Dalton tradition of movie Thursday."

"Movie Thursday?" He's intrigued.

"Wes and David started it a couple of years ago as a stress relief activity that didn't involve Wes getting sick or someone threatening to campus David if he didn't clean the kitchen up from his latest experiment. And then Blaine would go low after …" He catches himself mid ramble. "Anyway, they ended up on Blaine sitting duty until Blaine and Kurt got together. And then there was figuring out Niff, and Trent needed to watch Mean Girls, and someone had to make sure that Thad didn't antagonize the sevies… and yeah. Movie Thursday."

He raises his eyebrow. He's pretty sure that Jon has been speaking English the whole time, he's just not entirely sure how the words connect. It's sort of like the time that Sarai dragged him to her philosophy class when he eight to use him as an example. The entire classroom had been speaking the same French his sisters used at home, and the individual words had made sense, but they were incompressible when strung together.

He decides to use a simple tact to unravel the meaning. "… So you watch movies on Thursdays?"

Jon smiles brightly. "Yes." He sounds like he's talking to someone slow.

"And you want me to join you?"

"Yes."

"And it's just you?" He's not sure where more people are going to sit. Because they're sure as hell not getting in bed with him.

"Umm, Trent'n'Nick'n'me, and maybe Jeff and Seb if Seb's better? It's small tonight. The juniors have a history test tomorrow." Jon's rambling makes a little more sense, this time.

"Where?" A key question.

"The lounge, if Anne will spring you. Here otherwise."

"Only if no one bumps me," he agrees. "What are we watching?"

Jon holds up three DVD cases. "It's comic book month: DC, Marvel, or Scott Pilgrim."

They settle him on a couch in in the lounge, with his leg propped up. Sebastian and Jeff stay behind in the infirmary, but Nick and Trent pile together on a blanket while Jon lounges along a chair. He's pretty sure that half way through the movie, Jon's right leg starts getting longer of its own accord, but that might also be that he's tired and still sore. Pain does funny things to his brain. Still, as Anna Kendrick yells at Michael Cera, he decides that Dalton might be strange, but it's not entirely bad.

_A/N: Good luck to all my Aussie friends who start school again tomorrow… or actually anyone who has school tomorrow. And, points to the person who can name the works alluded to by the various names. I'll give you a hint: other than Kellen, the other three boys he's been are named after a group of vaguely associated people. And the foster families/counselors are bastardized from things you could find in my (or maybe Kurt's) iTunes library. And by points, I mean I will write the still un-claimed one-shot I promised in the last chapter of _The Unseen. _Okay, I'm going to bed now because I have to be up in 4 hours to call for the church for my best friend's wedding. But, I'll welcome any comments, questions, concerns, or caffeine you want to send my way._


	11. Chapter 11

He sleeps well that night. He sleeps like a corpse, sound and deep and detached. For the first time in days, he sleeps without being awoken by nightmares. He sleeps without being awoken by the checks performed on him during the night. He slumbers with the deep, honest exhaustion of a desperate, emotionally wrung out, broken toddler. And, when he wakes, he feels peaceful and refreshed and inexplicably safe.

He doesn't have to move to know that he's in a hospital bed, somewhere. Even if he's not fully sure where, or who, he is, he knows this for certain. He's on his back with an IV in his wrist, an O2 clip on his finger, and a blood pressure cuff wrapped around his bicep. A cold, wet spot by his knee suggests that he's had a bleed there. He opens his eyes before he moves. Even without his glasses, he can see the gentle shaft of early morning sunlight that illuminates the clean, airy room.

As is his practice, he takes slow stock of his joints. The cocoon of sleep dulls the pain in his knee and ankle, but he shifts his shoulder back into place with careful practice as well as his toes. Before he moves more, he tries to estimate the bracing he's going to need. The calculations run in his head. Knee plus ankle plus hospital probably mean crutches, but really mean wheelchair. If he's not putting weight on his legs, he probably won't need much more than immobilizers for the swelling. He'll need gloves, finger braces, and something on his shoulders as well. Stupid body.

"How are you feeling, Hunter?" A woman asks, surprising him from his inventory. He can make out blurry red circles on her white scrubs and a blond ponytail.

Apparently today he's … Oh shit. The world comes rushing back to him. Kellen and Hunter and Denver and Chicago and Fort Wayne and Dalton. Where and why and who hits him like a ton of bricks, and his stomach drops.

"Sore," he admits quietly.

"What's your number?" She asks briskly, referring to the chart of grimacing to sad faces posted in hospitals and clinics. It's numbered 0 to 10, where a 0 represents no pain and 10 is "the worst pain imaginable".

He has never, ever, as any person or any place, claimed 10. Because he imagines that you only get one or two in your life, and he doesn't want to waste them on something that might be seven or eight pain. Although there have been a few times when he's been at an eight or nine.

"Four." It's probably closer to a normal person's six or seven.

She nods, clearly oblivious to the way chronic pain changes your perception of what it is to live with (never without) pain. "Do you want something?"

He thinks back. Cannabis. Codeine. Vicodin. Oxycodone. Morphine. He'd give a lot for floating away from the pain and his memories and Hunter right now. Even if this is a safe place, there are things lurking.

"A couple of tylanol?" He gives a little half shrug.

"I'll be back in a minute." She slips out of the room as he starts his morning ritual of making himself functional. He feels for his glasses, and slips them onto his face. The world slides back into sharp, clear relief. He feels in his backpack for his gloves and his wrist splints. There isn't much he can do about his shoulders until he gets back to his room and his chest, though.

The nurse comes back with the little red pills and a glass of water. He throws them back, then settles against his pillows and waits for the medicine to take the edge off. He floats.

Just as he thinks that things are starting to settle again, a phone goes off across the room. He can hear his heart rate sky rocket and he imagines his blood pressure jumps 10 mmHg to the electronic keening of

_Near, Far, where ever you AAAAARRRRRREEEEE_

_I believe that my heart will go ooooonnnnnn_.

_A/N: Sebastian has horrible taste in morning music. I think he likes to play awful stuff because supposedly you can't go back to sleep if you're angry. Also, he likes dancing to it. Questions, comments, concerns? Please leave them below!_


	12. Interlude 1: Spies on Boats

Interlude I

Jon Boxer smiles as Jeff grabs his brunette boyfriend and drags him into a bastardized waltz. He glances over at Trent Nixon beside him, who just grins and starts singing along with Celine.

Love can touch us one time  
And last for a lifetime  
And never let go till we're gone

Love was when I loved you  
One true time I hold you  
In my life we'll always go on

"Sebastian has the worst taste in morning music," Jon observes.

Trent grins back, and joined in the chorus with gusto.

Jon can't help himself: he starts making ocean sounds. He likes to sing, but there's something about beatboxing. It's a unique skill.

The music cuts out, but he joints Trent, Nick and Trent as they continue their song. Thad jogs in, David trailing after. The boy start singing, and Thad winks at David. Jon is in David's arms before he can protest, and Thad is doing something like a swing dance with Trent.

"Fuck you all!" Sebastian's tired voice carries over the singing, but it doesn't do anything for them.

Sebastian honestly shouldn't have admitted his love of Titanic to Jeff during a low-induced ramble last week. But, they'd been flipping channels in the lounge and passed the top of the world scene (a scene that Nick and Jeff were currently acting out). Sebastian, hands and voice still shaking with hypoglycemia, had been only slightly less bubbly than Trent on caffeine with a new electronic device to take apart.

"I love Jack and Rose!" Sebastian had said dreamily. "I mean, I don't know why he couldn't have joined her on that raft, but fuck, it's a tragedy."

"You mean you love the breasts," Jeff had suggested.

Sebastian shook his head. "Girls are icky. They have cooties." He giggled. Sebastian only giggled when he was low. It was kind of amusing, or would have been if he hadn't been hypoglycemic…

But, that hypoglycemic revelation had lead to one of Jeff's more involved pranks. It was supposed to happen during lunch yesterday: Jon slipped Sebastian's phone out of his pocket, and passed it to Trent, who'd set the Celine song as Sebastian's ringtone. Then, Jon had slipped it back, without Sebastian even noticing. Of course, the distraction of the new boy, Hunter, had helped. As had Sebastian's unfortunate illness.

Jon had always been light-fingered and quick, even as a child. He'd liked to sneak around, and pick things up. It had started as a way to scare his older sisters. Annalise and Emilia were loud, but Jonny could be quiet and quick and stealthy. Jonny could tweek their braids and be away before the girls even knew he was there. When he was three, his sister, Annalise, had developed a strange fascination with the cold way (this was about the time six-year-old Emilia had discovered Andrew Lloyd Webber). Annalise had insisted on wearing a pillbox hat and an old trench coat every day for a month, until April when their mother took it away because bad people wore trench coats. Jonny had always liked Annalise's trench coat. She tended to leave pennies in the pockets, which he would reach in and lift out so he could ride the horey at the grocery store. Even without her coat, Annalise had resolved that she was going to be an international spy. And so she sent away (begged their mom to order from using her birthday money, but sent away sounded more Film Noir) for books on lock picking, code breaking, and general spy craft.

Three years later, six year old Jon discovered the books his sister had abandoned in favor of The Sims on their old family PC. When his leg had been sore, and the pain had kept him awake at night, he'd go to the bathroom and peer at the books. Soon, he learned to lock the bathroom door and pick it with a few pieces of wire he'd found (and by found, it had belonged to Emilia).

In second grade, Billy Jones had been his best friend. Billy Jones had been the most popular boy in school, but he picked Jon to be his best friend because Jon had Optimus Prime and Bumblebee transformers. Two days before Billy Jones' eighth birthday part at Discovery Zone, the doctor called to tell the Boxers that Jon had cancer. He couldn't go to Billy's birthday party. He couldn't go to school any more, at all.

He doesn't know why he's remembering this at all, except that the new boy, Hunter Clarington, reminds him of someone he'd met at the hospital: Charlie West. Unlike the kids at school (and Billy who Jonny was pretty sure was either an agent of the KGB or a Decepticon), Charlie was actually nice to him. Charlie had hurt his leg, too, so he had to use a wheelchair like Jonny, and they would have races down the long hall, and Charlie would poop wheelies with his fingers in his shiny silver rings. At night, they'd watch Transformers (Jon's choice) or Pokemon (Charlie's) or Adventures from the Book of Virtues (his dad's) or his dad would read to them from stories about spies and detectives like Encyclopedia Brown.

And, all the while, the doctor had been getting him ready for surgery. Even though he'd only been six, they'd given him a choice. They could take out the part of his bone that had the cancer and replace it with metal or someone else's bone. But, if they did that, he wouldn't be able to jump or do flips like Emilia was teaching him any more. Or, they could cut off his leg, and take away the bad part, then sew it back on in reverse. He could still play, but his leg would look funny.

Jonny woke up from surgery in a fog. It wasn't until a week later, when Analise came to help him into his wheelchair so he could go to the playroom to watch a group of older boys sing, that he even thought to wonder where Charlie was. … He never saw or heard from the other boy again. But, he's always wondered what happened to him. Because Charlie had been nice when no one else had been.

"This is an infirmary, not a circus!" Donavon's voice breaks through the chaos of the Warblers. Donavon is yet another in the long line of no-nonsense nurses hired by Dalton to care for their boys in sickness and in health.

Trent is sprawled between the two beds, laughing. Jeff is holding out his arms spread Eagle, with Nick infront of him, whispering in the brunette's ears, and David is trying to pass some sort of food to Sebastian. Hunter looks faintly amused behind his heavy plastic glasses. He shifts on the bed, and metal rings on his fingers glint in the morning sunlight streaming through the window.

Jon doesn't know how he's going to prove it, but he's convinced that Hunter and Charlie are the same person. He doesn't know why it matters so much to him, but it does. But first, he's going to make friends with the new boy in true Dalton style.

_A/N: You know how sometimes there are things about characters that just sort of hit you? Well, after a good, long discussion about cancer, boys, poop (I have lots of conversations about this lately, which means I probably need to write Wes), and stupid teachers with my friend tonight, this is the product. Thanks to Pi-on-a-skateboard for suggesting that Sebastian be the reason that the Warblers aren't allowed to watch Titanic anymore. And, if you were too young, too old, or like me, too uncool in 1998 to have seen the movie, the lyrics are from _My Heart will Go On _by Celine Dion and are naturally not mine._

_Questions, comments, concerns, criticisms, slurs and help grading are all welcome in the ask box._


	13. Chapter 13

"What are your plans for the day?" Jon asks him, as though it's perfectly normal behavior at Dalton to show up in the infirmary at eight thirty in the morning and interrogate the patients.

Hunter sighs. He'd shrug if he was confident in his shoulder. "Sleeping and maybe unpacking?"

Jeff, Nick, and the other boys crowd around Sebastian, and chatter at him. The day nurse looks at the boys, and comes over to his bed.

"How are you feeling?" The man asks.

He scowls. "You gave me regular Tylenol." He sounds accusatory. Normal Tylenol doesn't do anything for him anymore. He's needed codeine since he was twelve.

The man raises his eyebrow. "Your chart said no NSAIDs in big letters."

"A half-way decent human being would have offered me codeine. Or maybe some morphine derivative," he retorts coldly. Last night they'd given him the good stuff. The stuff that actually controlled his pain. But, the dose wore off while he was sleeping and he's cranky now.

The man checks his watch. "I can't give you anything now, not for another three hours, because of medication interaction. And I can't give you anything stronger than Tylenol without a doctor's permission."

"Anne gave me Codeine last night." His patience is wearing thin.

"Anne is a CNP. I'm not. We have different abilities to prescribe."

He glowers, darkly.

The nurse sighs. "I got you an emergency appointment with the hematology team at Children's this afternoon. And one with the PT staff there. But, you're not 18."

"Almost." Hunter is six months shy of 18, even though he's just past his sixteenth birthday. Growing up in and out of hospitals, he read a lot. And, although his memory isn't precisely eidetic, just like he knows faces that he's seen before, he can recall many of he things he's read. "Close enough that I could go alone."

The man shakes his head. "Dalton has _in loco parentus_. Even if you are 18, you can't go to the hospital alone."

"If I could get permission from my guardian, could I go alone? I know what I'm doing and I don't want anyone else there." He has been going to doctors appointments on his own since he was thirteen, and his first solo emergency room visit happened when he was eight. A teacher would only get in his way.

"Can you drive?" The nurse seemed dubious.

He shakes his head. He's never been in one place long enough (or admittedly old enough) to drive. Hunter had a license, and he has a version of he plastic card with his picture instead of his dead friend's, but it doesn't do him much good since he can't actually operate a motor vehicle. Sarai promised to enroll him in Driver's Ed at the Academy this year, but then everything happened and she forgot. (Lara doesn't drive, and has no concept of why he can't take public transit or taxis or walk everywhere like she does.)

"I can take him," Jon offers. "Well, Nick and Jeff and I can take him. I've got an appointment this afternoon."

The nurse looks skeptical. "Why do you need two boys to drive you to an appointment?"

"That's none of your business." Jon's expression hardens and his voice gets cold. There's a note of finality to it.

The man shrugs. "Fine, if you can get there, you can go alone. I'll fill out the paperwork and submit it."

He nods. "Do you need me to stay here until then?"

"No." The nurse consults his chart. "But you need to stay off that knee. And ankle. And come back if there's a problem."

He just looks at the man like he's stupid. "I need to borrow a wheelchair."

He moves over to the proffered chair without help, and hugs his pack to his chest. The other boys move quickly away from Sebastian's bed as he starts retching again. The male nurse moves to the sick boy's side instead.

"Breakfast?" A dark haired stranger asks.

"Breakfast." Agrees the black boy beside him. "Although unfortunately, we may only have time for cereal."

The ravenette pouts. "You said I could have bacon, earlier."

"That was before Niff decided to include us in their prank. And, I have to go call Katherine. And you need to skype Wes to remind _him _to eat." The black boy rambled, again, without context.

He suddenly feels very tired, not just from the pain, but from the effort of fitting in.

_A/N: I decided that this was Dalton, and Benjamin Button syndrome applies. For non-US readers, Tylanol is the trade name for acetaminophen/paracetamol. Next chapter will likely not be until Sunday for work related reasons. _In loco parentis _is latin which basically means that schools may act as parents for their students. It's become uncommon in recent years, however, the school where I went to undergrad had a clause for it, and it was applied to any student living on campus, including those of us who were over 18 or 21! I imagine that a school like Dalton would have a more stringent version. Questions, comments, concerns, and questions about chemistry all welcome._


	14. Chapter 14

The boys scatter after breakfast. The black boy, David, has World History, and the one with black hair and a mischievous expression (Thad? Tad?) drags Nick off to English. Trent clutches a physics book to his chest with a beatific smile on his face.

Jon takes him back upstairs to the room he's sharing with Sebastian. The long-time Dalton student is limping slightly as he pushes the wheelchair. Not so much that a normal person might notice, but he's been around injuries enough that the uneven gate surprises him.

"We'll leave for Children's around eleven." Jon's quiet voice echoes in the elevator. "If there's anything you need between now and then…"

He feels scuzzy and fragile. There's something about IV lines and hospital beds that do it to him. He wants a shower. He wants a fentanyl sucker to control his pain. He wants sleep. He knows that Jon doesn't have access to narcotics, but he probably knows where to bathe.

"I want a shower, and could you maybe help me make my bed?" He hates having to make the request. It makes him feel vulnerable. On the other hand, trying to shower standing up with his ankle and knee will be almost impossible. The bulky wheelchair will make getting around the bed to tuck the sheets in, or even up onto the freshly made bed hard. Later, he'll lower the bed. Later, he'll get a wheelchair that can't double as a late 60's Impala. But, for now, he has to ask for help.

Jon shakes his head. "Come use mine and Trent's shower. Sebastian is …" The boy makes a disgusted face. "We have a chair 'cause Trent is kind of accident prone."

"When we go to the hospital this afternoon, do we have to be in uniform?" He doesn't want to have to change pants more than once.

Jon shrugs. "Wes would say yes. Blaine and Sebastian might say yes. But, you haven't been to one class here, yet, so you can decide. Just, you know, no sweats. At least not in the car." He wrinkles his nose. "Neither of us wants a lecture from Trent or Nick. And nothing that looks like Uggs. Jeff is driving."

He refrains from asking why Jeff hates the sheepskin boots and checks the clothes in his backpack. He has a pair of climbing jeans with their little bit of elastic. Even though Hunter never managed to coax him out to the bouldering gyms, his former roommate had introduced him to climbing pants with just enough spandex that they moved. Clothes that could move for his joints when he had them immobilized were a genius discovery.

He collects the things he needs before the shower (clean boxers, braces, toiletries, electric razor) and takes a serpticious peak into the bathroom he shares with Sebastian. His roommate _will _be cleaning the short coarse, curly hairs out of the tub. Jon and Trent's room is set up much like the one he shares with Sebastian: twin beds with a space between them, desks covered in textbooks, a few crumpled sheets of notebook paper, and doors to what he can only presume are the bathroom and closet.

"Let me know if you need anything." Jon sits on one of the beds staring up at a poster of Amanda Bynes (the pre-DUI years, he notes). Below the poster is an artistic mobile of plasticized ... boobs and bras? A few even have some lacy or glitter glued on.

He shrugs. "Thanks." He's not going to ask for help, no matter what happens. There are some things that are just too embarrassing to contemplate. Even with Hunter, who he trusted, he'd never asked for help.

He showered without minor incident, and convinced (begged) Jon to help him with the bed. Then, he fell into a state of relaxation somewhere between true consciousness and true sleep.

_A/N: Shout-out to everyone who has read/reviewed/alerted/favorite, especially YouDontKnowMe06, Pi-on-a-skateboard and PenMagic._

_Also thank you to Pi-on-a-skateboard for convincing me that Jon should make shrinky-dinks. The decision to make the bra mobile was entirely my own (although, Niff currently has the mobile of phalluses because they make Nick somewhat uncomfortable and Jeff just giggles.)_

_Next chapter is the hospital, some revelations, and some very special lollies. Should hopefully be up tomorrow. I survived interview weekend one without throwing any recruits off the side of a mountain (… it was an accident and she came to school here so it was okay) or being present when they got outrageously drunk (I might have been the drunk one last year who got over enthausic about microscopes… but this is why I'm getting a PhD in biochemistry). Anyway, Questions, Comments, Concerns, Criticisms, or suggests are all welcome. Thanks for reading! – C65._


	15. Chapter 15

There is something in the air at Dalton academy that makes even highly rational people like himself do crazy things. Crazy things like letting four of his fellow students, none of whom can be more than nineteen years old, drive him to a doctor's appointment in a van which is older than he is. There's something not-quite comforting about the way Jeff, Nick, Jon, and Trent pile into the …vehicle. It sort of looks like it's survived a war. Some of the original teal is retained on the sides, although much is covered in sparkling purple flames. There is red … something ground into the bucket seat on the driver's side, and the sheer number of Beanie Baby stickers on the window is impressive.

Nick takes the wheel, and starts the care before passing the keys back to Jon, in the bucket seat. Jon leans his own pair of forearm crutches (crimsion with blue grips) against the window with a quiet sigh. He wonders why, but doesn't ask. It's common curtesy. Trent pops into the passenger's seat with his phone, a map, a list and a pen. Nick can drive, but he can't navigate himself out of a paper bag (the experiment has been tried once or twice).

Jeff helps him into the other bucket seat, and throws his black pack into the back before returning the Dalton-issue wheelchair. He _is _getting his own before the trip is over if he has to abduct the others and steal the Aerovan.

The soundtrack for the trip is a mix of summer hits. Carley Rae Jepson makes it almost ubiquitous an appearance, as do Rihanna, One Direction, David Guetta, Taylor Swift, Katie Perry, and Kelly Clarkson. Half way through the ride, Jon passes up his music player and demands the group consider Mumford and Sons.

He doesn't follow completely; he's too focused on holding himself together. The van has a strange smell, and it turns his stomach. He disconnects from the situation again, letting himself float away. The car ride and the sharp pain in his knee, which is neither a true throb nor a long-lived ache make him feel dizzy and empty. He's thankful when Trent passes him a mint from the glove compartment, and then Jeff gives him a bottle of water.

Children's is a beautiful building on the campus of the University of Ohio. Trent finds him a wheelchair, and pushes him through the sliding glass doors into the airy lobby with its white marble floors and open staircases.

"Should we wait for Jon and Nick?" Trent sounds fidgety.

Jeff half shrugs. "What time is your appointment, mate?"

He checks his calendar. He's gotten into the habit of keeping a paper one over the years, even though an electronic might be easier. Perhaps its to spite his sisters. Perhaps it's because of them. Paper leaves a more distinct trail, but it's easier to redact as well. And, there's something comforting about seeing notes in his tight, slanted print that reminds him of what he needs to do. "Hematologist at twelve thirty, PT at two."

Jeff checks his watch. "It's quarter after, now. Jon's a big boy, Trent. He'll text if he needs us."

He sighs. "Actually, I'm fine going alone. … I'd prefer to go alone."

The lobby is bright. Dust moats ride shafts of sunlight, like fairies. Even though everyone thought they were girly, he sort of liked fairies when he was younger. Not sprites with wings and hats made from leaves, but proper fairies. The Sidthe. Beautiful, powerful, rational and utterly just. With the Sidthe, there was never

"Do you want us to take you?" Trent sounds nervous.

He flexes his shoulders, and re-focuses his thoughts. He could take himself, but he doesn't know where he needs to be. And damn it, it would suck to get lost on his first day. So, he gives in his pride and tells the truth, sort of. "Yeah, that would be nice."

The blonde walks over to the reception desk and asks for directions which Trent pushes the wheelchair, trips over the air, and almost goes sprawling. Jeff comes hurrying over and rescues they both, before medical personal is needed.

He's thankful that no one has decided to decorate the haemotologist's office for children. He doesn't know who decided that small children need lurid colors to feel more comfortable in the hospital, but he's ready to hit that person over the head with a candy-apple red cube a top a lime-green sphere. Instead, the hematology team has chosen to decorate the space in soothing, neutral sage greens, grays and browns. The short carpeting does hide stains well, but he supposes that's a requirement for post public facilities. He's thankful that it seems clean as Trent makes a beeline over to the bin of oversized legos and happily joins two three-year-olds in building a "Tar'is" so they can meet the Doctor.

Jeff pushes his awkward, bulky chair to the end of a line of seats, and settles himself nearby. The blonde sends a quick text, then produces an iPod and a battered copy of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. He seems prepared to wait like Trent is, although the Aussie regularly steals jealous glances at the toy blocks.

He supposes he could read while they wait, but focusing just takes ... so much energy. He goes back to pondering the question of decoration in children's hospitals. He doesn't dislike the bold, primary color palate most places use. It's good for the three-to-seven crowd he always sees in the lobbies with their mothers: little boys with Spiderman on their leg braces and girls who wear tiaras on their bald heads. The problem is that children's hospitals don't just serve the infants, toddlers and little kids everyone thinks of. There are precocious children in elementary school, jaded tweens and sullen teens. For once, he'd like to see someplace decorates to their standards. A cardiologist's office decorated like a four-chambered mammalian heart. A quiet, dark hallways where the sun filtered in through gentle curtains with sound proof walls where you could rage against the your life. Four walls as gray and empty as you feel.

"Hunter Clarington?" The young nurse holding his chart is clearly not saying it for the first time.

He looks for his curly haired friend, but Hunter is not there. He remembers. Hunter is gone. And it's his fault. All his fault.

A lump rises in his throat and a ball of tears burn behind his eyes. He swings his pack into his lap, and jerks forward, not caring who or what is in his way. Sometime stops him, holds his wheels back.

A voice murmurs in his ear. "Do you want someone to come back? You're kind of a mess?"

He shrugs, and he feels his shoulder sublux. It hurts, but who the hell cares? What's a little more pain to someone like him?

"You have to calm down." The tone is utterly serious. "You can't go in like this. Do whatever the fuck you have to do to get your head into the game." A wrist appears in front of his face, and the silver-pink scars he though he saw in the clinic are in sharp relief against the black knit wrist band.

The chair starts moving forward again, more easily with someone pushing. He hates being pushed. He hates being weak. He hates doctors and fucking hospitals and his whole lif. And GODDAMMIT, he is not having a breakdown here. This can wait.

He focuses on his breathing. One, two. One, two. They pass back into the clinic.

_A/N: You know how some things want to write themselves and sometimes don't? Somehow the rant about hospital waiting rooms and color schemes (I have memories of a particularly bad Doctors Office decorated in Safari animals where I used to go just absolutely bonkers when I was about 11) wanted to come more than did the touching scene between Jon and Hunt I though I'd get. _Sigh. _Boys._

_For those of you who do not remember enough of the 90's for your older cousins to have had a Ford Aerovan which they took to see _Mr. Goodburger, _and then re-enact most of the movie out of the sliding windows in the door,_ _an image of Jon's van can be found here (remove the spaces): ride/ 666996/ 1992-ford-aerostar/ … No, I'm not still jealous. _

_To answer _NiffAreForever_, if you're still reading this, you got 2/3 of the name sources right. The second was totally Rocky Horror (by the way, as a PSA, don't dance the Time Warp while you're supposed to be teaching), and the third WERE characters from the Secret Garden. … The first set of names were my (very) weak homage to the men of Youtube. William is Hank Green's real first name, Jack and Finn Harris host Jack's Gap, Charlie is a reference to Charlie McDonald on Charlieissocoollike. I just like the name, Kellen. Let me know if you want a one-shot, here or on Tumblr?_

_Question, comments, concerns, clarifications, criticisms, etc. all welcome._

_-C65_


	16. Chapter 16

"Food now or food now and later?" Jeff asks as they make their way to the elevator after the appointment. The blond makes no mention of the way he cried like a child when the doctor pressed on his joint, or the way he begged for painkillers. It's not that Jeff was quiet; he talked to the doctor with a quiet authority of someone much older. Jeff argued for him, sat with him, and acted generally responsible. It was a weird kind of wonderful.

He glances back at the blond and waves a sheaf of papers. "Pharmacy," he demands. "I want my damn codeine." The doctor had prescribed him Tylenol 3 and a few Actiq suckers. He could do with the stronger painkiller, but they give him wicked digestive upset at either end, and he doesn't want to spend half of his second appointment slightly high alternating between slumped against the toilet and perched on it. Codeine, though, he can handle. The clouding and exhaustion from codeine is about the same as the exhaustion and clouding he gets from pain. Only it hurts a lot less.

Jeff pushes a package of pills into his hands, and Trent hands him another water bottle. He reads the wrapper and wrinkles his nose. "Have you been holding out on me?"

"The nurse gave it to me to tide you over, in case you needed it, mate."

A familiar brunette joins them, bending over to peck the blond on his cheek. "Turned on some of your famous Melbourne charm, babe?"

He feels the hot glare of an older woman on the four of them, which only gets worse when Trent takes over the chair so Nick and Jeff can hold hands. He doesn't care, not really. He knows Lara has had female clients before; her sex with other women has feed him, clothed him and kept him in painkillers and braces. But, there's a difference between doing something in private and doing it publicly.

He can tell from watching them that Nick carries the shame, but Jeff is the submissive one in their relationship. Jeff is more likely to initiate PDA, but Nick is more aggressive with it. He's hungrier, as though he's been watching people eat at a buffet all his life but has never been able to taste it himself and Jeff is his ticket into a new world.

Trent half clears his throat and half coughs. "Where's Beatz?"

"Downstairs," Nick sobers quickly, love's drug passing through his system. "He was going to get us a table."

"He got tired and you wanted to know where we were," Jeff interpreted.

His boyfriend glares. "You weren't answering your phones!"

"Mine still won't pick up signals from the Tardis," Trent pouts quietly. "But I think I'm getting something from the ISS. Or, at least, it sounds Russian."

He's not sure if Trent is being obtuse, or not. Or why the boy is quite so obsessed with inter-dimensional travel. There are plenty of frightening, awful things happening right here on this planet without worrying about extra-terrestrial problems or homicidal aliens.

Lunch is quiet. Nick, Jeff and Jon bicker over who will pay while he slips the cashier three twenties. But, the others all seem distracted. Jon rubs his thigh, nervously, and picks at his fries. Trent looks guilty as he eats his chicken sandwich. Nick is concerned.

"How is she?" Trent asks, quietly.

Nick stabs his lettuce with a quiet, intense ferocity. "She was in treatment, but she'll be out this afternoon. When Amber is back."

Jeff winces. "She's still not talking to you?"

"Not unless she needs something from me." The bitterness is almost palpable. "I'm not allowed around Kaylee, unless it's in an OR so they can take out my bone marrow, or late at night when she can't go to the pharmacy and can I run by?"

Trent shakes his head. "That sucks, man. Has Kaylee said anything?"

Nick rests his head in his hands. "…Only asked why I hated her, and if I was going to go away like Kevin."

Jeff slams his drink cup down, but his voice remains even and calm. "So, we're going up after lunch? You and me, babe?"

Nick gives a half shrug.

"I'll distract Amberlyn," offers Trent. "Tell her that I think I'm ready…"

Jon and Nick snort into their trays in unison. "She thinks you're the boa-wearing, quinoa-eating, Disney-singing spawn of Satan. She's never going to believe you."

"We were having a princess tea party." Trent sounds resigned. "But, if you want me to, I can do it."

Nick shrugs, and Trent glances at his watch. "I need to stop and get some supplies if this mission is going to work. Jon, Hunt, will meet at oh-sixteen-hundred?"

The trio disappears for their "supplies" which he can only imagine will cause trouble, and he and Jon sit a bit longer. He assumes Kaylee must be a patient here, maybe a cousin or a family friend's child?

Part of him is jealous of this little girl he's never met. He wishes that he'd had people like Nick and Jeff and Trent when he was going up, people who would break the rules to come see him, and would have left him feeling betrayed if they didn't show up. Betrayal would have been better than the sporadic, sometimes frightening visits from his sisters and facing most things alone. He hasn't seen Lara or Sarai in almost fifteen months, even after what happened in Denver.

"We should go." Jon's voice cuts through his green-eyed musings. "We still need to change."

"Change?" He's not looking forward to this.

"You did bring shorts, didn't you?" Jon asks pointedly.

He reaches for his pack, and sets it on his lap. It's his life in a shell that he can carry. He fishes through the various detritius of clothes and personal things in the main compartment, coming across what he'd expect: a dirty pair of marijuana leaf boxers that Hunter bought for him as a gag gift, and a clean pair with the Colorado flag on them, a set of wrist braces to help with carpo-tunnel, a Jim Butcher paperback, an empty prescription bottle and a few t-shirts which may or may not be clean. He doesn't bother to look through the more organized front pocket where he keeps more braces (soft knee, ankle, elbow, shoulder and finger) or the one with his wallet and phone or iPad.

"No, do I need them?"

Jon sighs and flips out his phone. "Trent, can you guys bring back a pair of athletic shorts? … Yes, I know that they don't go well with your Kazoo band, but Hunter forgot his." He put his hand over the phone. "What size?"

"Large?"

Jon releases the mouth piece. "Large. Get the soft kind. … Yeah, I'll get them from you in the lobby. … Umm, if you can find a tiara, take her one from me? And a wand. … No, a dinosaur wand! Yes, a pink or purple fairy wand with feathers. … Yes, Yes, Yes! I want pictures. … Okay, I'll see you in a bit. Thanks, Trent."

They wait in the lobby. Jon cracks his fingers, shifts his weight impatiently (wincing every so often as he comes down on his right leg) and check his watch. At quarter after two, Trent comes running by and slips Jon and red and white shopping bag. Trent is wearing a headband with red, satiny devil horns and a forked tail is stuck to the back of pants. He can't help but laugh as Jon leads him back to the locker rooms associated with the physical therapy clinic.

"Do you need help?" Jon is being polite, but is clearly uncomfortable with the suggestion.

He shakes his head, and puts a bank of lockers between himself and Jon. He feels lucky that the locker room is empty. It's not that he's self-concious about his body, exactly, but he'd just as soon not explain his entire medical history. The scars on his torso, on his legs and on his arms paint a picture of his childhood. It's a story he doesn't want to have to translate, or relive right now.

He hates the awkward way his legs look sitting in the wheelchair in shorts. His knee underneath the ace bandages is huge and bulky. A bruise peaks out from the ankle brace. When he looks at himself in the mirror, he thinks he looks like an injured athlete: a football or soccer player, maybe, instead of a sissy gymnast or dancer. He leaves on his finger braces, and retrieves his medical binder before wedging his pack and clothes into a locker. He clips the key to his shorts, and wheels to meet Jon.

Jon is wearing pants. They're athletic pants, or stripper pants, depending on your perspective on tear-away clothes.

He doesn't understand. "How come I have to wear shorts, but you get away with those?"

"My leg is cold." Jon shrugs, trying to brush it off. They exit the locker room into the large gym.

_A/N: Actiq is an oral dose of the powerful painkiller, fentanyl, which is about 100 times more powerful than morphine than Wikipedia. Tylenol 3 is acetaminophen with 30 mg of codeine per tablet. Both are controlled substances in the US._

_I will work on the Niff AU one-shot for NiffAreForever. I have a … few… ideas. Hopefully they'll be good._

_Thank you to everyone who is reading, following or favoriting. Shout outs to __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**__, __**Youdontknowme06**__, __**PenMagic**__ and __**NiffareFovever**__!_

_Questions, comments, concerns, critiques, recommendations, requests, or good excuses for my professors to explain why I've been writing instead of grading lab reports are all appreciated._

_-C65_


	17. Chapter 17

He and Jon are sent to low, padded tables next to each other in the therapy room. The person who wheels him over asks if he needs help transferring. He shakes his head. "I just hurt my knee, and ankle," he points out. The tech shrugs, and wanders off with the wheelchair. He watches Jon as they wait. His classmate shifts his pants, and glances over nervously as the therapists approach.

"Jon, buddy, you know the rules," A muscular man with buzzed hair and an easy smile approaches. "Pants off."

"You let other people wear them," Jon points out, avoiding the order.

The therapist shakes his head. "I don't understand how you swim competitively for Dalton and wear that little speedo but get all modest here."

Jon raises an eyebrow.

"I read the papers, kid. Congratulations, by the way. Now, off with those pants."

Jon blushes, but finally starts to comply standing up and pulling at the snaps. At that moment, a cell phone starts ringing.

_I have passion in my pants  
And I ain't afraid to show it!  
I'm Sexy and I know it!_

"I am going to kill Thad," the boy comments quietly, as he shakes his hips and throws the pants onto the table with a flourish. His therapist just laughs.

He has to try not to stare. He didn't know that Jon was an amputee. But, damn it, he can be polite the way he expects other people to be. So, he glances up from the fibroglass and metal leg to meet Jon's eyes and then to scan the rest of the room.

His therapist is rapidly approaching. He spends the next hour distracted as they talk about bracing, stabilizing, and immobilizing. About the exercises he needs and when she thinks he'll be able to walk again. She spots him as he lifts light weights, and encourages him to try yoga. He's pretty sure he's having a brain fart, but he questions why a therapist wants him to do anything with that green hairy puppet from Star Wars.

He is generally satisfied with the appointment. The therapist wants him to start regular physical and occupational therapy under their direction to strengthen his muscles. He figures that as soon as his injuries heal, he'll go back to tumbling and dance in braces and swimming. They encourage him to go to see the orthopedist, too, going so far as to make him appointment. Across the gym, Jon argues quietly with his therapist again, and a doctor comes down to consult.

After the session, he takes a black loaner wheelchair back to the locker rooms. They've promised to get him one that fits, but this is already miles beyond the chairs he's been using over the past few days. He peels off his sweaty t-shirt, throwing it onto a bench by his locker in a manner not dissimilar to the way Jon disrobed earlier, and drapes a towel over the back of the chair. He doesn't think about his scars as he makes his way to the shower area.

He's perhaps more surprised than he should be to find multiple showers with benches and easy access for those who have trouble standing. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised, considering the purpose of the facility, but he appreciates the effort never the less.

He takes a quick, efficient shower with a bar of soap he finds in his bag. Hunter and Evens used to mock him back in Colorado, calling him, "Boy Scout", but he didn't mind so much. The times his life has gone awry were because he was _unprepared_, not over prepared. It also wouldn't have hurt his reputation if he'd been trying to get sexual favors to be innocent and virginal. Some people like the power and challenge. He pushes the last thought out of his head as he washes himself, letting the fear sand repulsion swirl down the drain with the soapsuds.

When the iron bands around his chest unclench, he wraps his towel around his waist and exits the shower. Jon is leaving at the same time, attired in a similar manner. The two boys glance at each other, and then stop and stare. Jon's leg, the short one, looks like one of Dr. Frankenstein's experiments. Someone took off the calf, ankle, and foot and sewed it back on to point backwards. What's more, there are lines of blisters and raw patches and the skin is flaky and red. He's never seen anything like it, and it takes a moment for his brain to re-engage so he can stop gaping.

"Does Mr. Tom know you have foot fungus?" Words escape his mouth before he can stop them.

As soon as he says them, he is ready to kick himself. There is no excuse for being slopping. Pain is not an excuse. Drugs are not an excuse. Lara and Sarai will make him move if they know he's slipped up. And, goddammit, he likes staying in one place. He likes being normal. This may be one more placement before he turns 18, but he'd prefer there not be another after it.

Meanwhile, Jon distractedly studies the new boy's chest, seeing an old pattern of scars there. Even after all these years, all these miles, and a fine smattering of golden hair, the scars are unforgettable.

"Charlie?" Jon whispers.

He tries to deny it, but it's a feeble attempt. "I don't know…"

"You asked if 'Mr. Tom' knew I had foot fungus," Jon accuses quickly. "I never mentioned my family."

"Trent did," he lies, quickly. "While you were in the bathroom during the movie."

"Trent, Nick and Jeff all call my dad Thomas or Tom. No honorific." Jon catches him.

"I was raised to be polite." Not a lie. He was also raised to be careful.

The two boys stare at each other for a minute, trying for intimidation. Jon is remembering a boy with a pick up sticks array of scars, and a distinct star pattern just below his right breast bone. It was special, he remembered, because Charlie West had been one of the only people he had ever met who had his heart on the wrong side of his body.

Jon breaks the gaze first, to glace at his watch. "Look, Charlie, or Hunter or who ever the hell you are, I have to make it up to X-ray before it closes at four."

He feels vindicated.

"But, this isn't over," Jon promises. "I know you're hiding something."

He shrugs, trying to be nonchalant while the blood rushes in his ears and his stomach tries to climb back out of the hole it's climbed into. He must be successful, because Jon turns away and hurries into the locker room to change.

Despite the tension, he accompanies Jon up to the radiology suite. Neither says anything about Charlie, or cancer or scars or memories as the tech sends Jon through an X-ray and then an MRI. They fall into silence. Neither says anything when the tech calls in an orthopedic consult. Neither says anything as Jon is taken away in a wheelchair, presumable to get a stern lecture or else grim news. It's only after Jon leaves that he realizes he has no idea of how to find Nick, Jeff, Trent, Jon, the lucky Kaylee, or his van back to school.

_A/N: I hope this satisfies the expectations for this chapter between stripping, confrontation and everything. I needed to get this out before I go to sleep (stupid characters). Thanks and love to everyone who is reading, following, favoriting or reviewing._

_Thad's ringtone is _"Sexy and I know it_" by LMFAO. My recommendation is that if you need to hear the music, either look up a version without the music video or else find the Pentatonix LMFAO mash-up. The sparkly leopard print mankinis were a bit much IMHO._

_Question, comments, concerns, critiques, or good explanations as to why I'm falling asleep in class tomorrow (other than that I was writing fan fic at 5 am) all welcome. _


	18. Chapter 18

Left alone, he wheels himself to the lobby. He hopes the others can't leave without going through this exit, although he's not sure. He doubts they'll forget it, but it wouldn't be the worst thing that's ever happened.

In the meantime, he finds a table and phones his sisters.

"_Rana_? Two phone calls in as many days?" Sarai greets him in crisp, cold German. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I did a number on my knee yesterday." He tells her in English. "Bleed in the right one."

"On top of what happened in Chicago." His sister's voice is dry.

Sarai is one of the only people who can make him feel like an embarrassed child. "It was an accident. I tripped."

"You tripped?" The words drip with cynicism and sarcasm. "Rana, I've seen you win a few gymnastics and dance competitions. You can land a perfect dive, but you tripped?"

"Someone … I … left a brace on the floor." He tries not to sound sulky.

Sarai sounds bored. "File the paperwork and the trust will cover it."

"Just… just…" He stutters a bit. "I just wanted to let you know."

His sister sighs and says something muffled to someone else in what might be Portuguese or Russian. "Look, Rana, I have to go. Something's just come up."

"Thanks." He tries not to let himself feel lost or hurt. Sarai and Lara have behaved this way before. He should be used to it by now.

His sister closes the phone line, and he's left with the sound of static and an emptiness in his stomach.

"Shiny!" A little boy with cherubic cheeks and a smooth head points to his rings. "Can I touch?"

He glances down at the child, and smiles. "If they fit, you can try one."

His pinky brace had an odd tendency to go missing when he lived with Hunter, and he keeps an extra in his bag. The boy comes closer, and he slides the silver ring brace from his digit.

"Where are you supposed to be?" He asks the child as the little boy comes closer. The child is maybe five or six.

"On-call-gee," the boy pronounces the word carefully. "I'm Max."

"I'm Frog," he says, using Sarai's nickname for him from when they were small children. He doesn't remember why she has always called him little frog, but knows she does. He motions toward his lap. "Can I give you a ride back there?"

Max shakes his bald head. "I'm runnin' away to Hogwarts. Madam Pomfrey, she can fix my blood with her wand or meal 'ole Snape, he can make me a potion to make me better. I won't care that he's mean, if it doesn't taste too bad… the medicine I get, it tastes bad."

It's clear that Max has not gotten to the seventh book.

He tries a different tact. "But, won't your mom and dad miss you if you go to Hogwarts?"

"I don't got a mom or a dad. I don't even have no uncle or Warbler like Kaylee. Or a granddad like Tommy. I'm a foster kid." Max shakes his head. The little boy looks down at his scuffed tennis shoes. "Nobody'll even miss me."

It almost breaks his stone heart when the little boy says that. He leans forward in his chair. "I'll make a bet with you Max," he offers, holding out the silver rings. "I'll give this to you to keep if we go back up to Oncology and they're upset because you're missing."

Max looks at him skeptically. "You're just saying that because you want me to go back. You don't care."

He shrugs. "That's fine. I need the rings anyway." He puts his phone back in his pack, and starts to wheel away.

"Fine!" Max's voice sounds desperate and scared. The little boy doesn't want to have to run away.

"Do you want a ride?" He offers again. This time, the little boy doesn't hesitate to climb onto his lap. He hasn't been in the system very long, then, or he's been lucky.

Normally, he'd be afraid with someone touching him this close. But, the warm squirming body feels good against him. "Eighth floor," the child tells him, tiredly. He's not sure he trusts the little boy's word, so he wheels over to the information desk.

"I have a little boy from oncology?" He's tentative. He prays that no one thinks he was trying to kidnap the little boy instead of return him.

The man at the desk smiles up at him and studies his passenger. "Maxie?" The man asks. The boy makes a quiet affirmative sound. The docent presses a few numbers on his phone. "Someone found him. We've got him in the lobby."

Soon, security comes down to investigate the situation. They try to pry Max off his lap, but the little boy clings to him. And, he promises to answer questions after they get the kid back upstairs. So, it's in the company of a pair of security guards that he and Max arrive on the oncology ward.

A nurse comes over, and tries to pull the sleepy boy off his lap. Max isn't having any of it. "Where have you been? We were so worried!"

"With Frog, going to Hogwarts." The warmth on his lap shifts.

The security officers raise their eyebrows at him, suspicious. "Max said he was running away, and I tried to get him to come back here." He knows the explanation sounds lame, but it's the truth.

"Yep," Max confirms. "Mr. Frog said you guys would be looking for me. And he was right!" The is glee in the child's voice.

He palms one of the rings to the little boy. He nurse looks at the security guards. "Look, he's back and safe, and Frog? Isn't much more than a boy himself. He's probably just a patient."

"Haemotology," he agrees. "I was down there, you can ask."

The officers take his phone number and his name and check his – Hunter's – driver's license before they let him go.

As nurse leads the way to Max's room, he hums quietly.

"Stay?" The little boy asks once he's safely in bed.

He sighs. He doesn't know what it is about this child, but he agrees. He hums more, and as the little boy falls asleep, he finds himself singing the lullaby he remembers … someone singing to him hwen he was a little boy. Before he was Charlie or John or Jack or Anthony or Hunter.

_Hush-a-bye, don't you cry  
Go to sleep my little baby  
When you wake, you shall find  
All the pretty little horses  
Blacks and bays,  
Dapples and grays  
A coach and six pretty horses_

Nick and Jeff find him there, half asleep and still holding Maxie's hand.

"We've been looking for you!" Trent says quietly for him, which is loud to anyone else. "Let's get dinner and go back to school."

He's tired: physically, emotionally, mentally. It's been too long of a day. It's been too long since he's felt this, felt anything really. "Okay," he agrees. "But let me ask about visiting again, first?"

He's going to come back so Max doesn't think he has to run away again to Hogwarts to be loved.

_A/N: Song is "All the Pretty Little Horses" which I'm about 90% sure is public domain. So… Now Hunt is back in the fold and he has a friend? I dunno if this works. _

_Administrative note and/or shameless self promotion: NiffAreForever's oneshot (I will fix the name, I promise!), _We're Painted Red to Fit Right In, _which is a post-apocyloptic Niff AU is up if you want to read it… I may or may not cried when I was writing it._

_Questions, comments, concerns, critiques, or suggestions for appropriate ways people can thank me for going into lab for them at 8 am tomorrow (it's 4 am now BTW) all welcome!  
-C65_


	19. Chapter 19

Driving back towards Dalton after their hospital visit is one of the strangest trips he's ever taken, and he's been on some strange journeys. There have been helicopter rides where his chest hurt and he couldn't catch his breath to laugh (better to laugh than to cry) through the blaze of pain and adrenaline and drugs when the EMTs couldn't figure out why his heart rhythms were backwards. There was the time that someone decided to take him horseback riding and he dislocated both hips and had to be carried out on a stretcher made of a kayak, sleeping bag and climbing rope while his leader talked about vision quests and healing herbs. And then there was the infamous Greyhound trip the summer he turned fourteen and ended up sandwiched between a psych versed in rumpology, a contingent of Lucho-libre groupies, and someone he was pretty sure was a furry.

They're back in Jon's awful old van with the purple flames. After Nick and Trent found him, they rendezvoused with Jon and Jeff in the lobby. The pair had been subdued, in contrast to Trent's puppy-like excitement and Nick's quiet joy. Jon leaned on his crutches, and Jeff carried the prosthetic leg like a trophy.

"What do we want for food?" Jon is navigating.

"Dollar menu," Trent pipes up from the back seat. "Cheap and delicious."

He frowns. He is _not _eating off the dollar menu. His digestion is not the most robust thing in the world, and the fries are too salty.

"Do you know how much gluten is in that food?" Nick demands, slamming on the break, forcefully. "If we go, I'm using _your _bathroom."

Jon speaks almost too quickly. "No dollar menu, then, Trent!"

"Nandos?" Jeff proposes from the other captain's seat.

Nick's expressive eye-roll is obvious in the rearview mirror. "Has to be in this state, babe. So, no In-and-Out, either."

Jeff gives a dejected sigh.

"Indian?" Jon proposes.

"Less than $10 a plate." Trent objects.

"Thai?" He proposes. It's cheap. Its served over rice, which he's pretty sure doesn't have gluten, and if there's a place around here, its hopefully decent.

"All hail our new genius leader," Jeff says with a laugh, using the prosthetic leg to attempt to knight him.

"Watch what you're doing with my leg," Jon warns.

He swats the foot away. It smells like a locker room.

"Do you want to call Thad or David and see if they want anything? Mr. Smythe came to take Sebastian home as we were leaving."

Jeff shrugs, and pulls out his phone. "Thad? Do you want us to bring back some Thai? … Okay. Pad Prik King and Tom Kai Gai. … Crap. What kind? … You're joking, right? … Fuck. Well, we'll be back in a couple of hours. Try to keep things quiet until then. … See you."

Jeff hangs up the phone. "Who told David something was wrong?"

Nick and Trent exchange guilty glances in the rear view. "All I said was that you and Jon were running late, Hunter was missing and everything was fine with Kaylee," the driver says.

"Well, now, he's making feel cookies." Jeff thumps his hand against his sternum, near where his heart is. "Feel Cookies, Nicky."

"Fuck." Trent is succinct and somewhat surprising.

He's getting tired of being out of the loop, and really needs an explanation. "Why is David baking bad?"

"Our David, he's a …" Jon starts to giggle. "He's a stress baker."

"A what?" He's pretty sure he heard Jon correctly, but he needs clarification.

Nick pulls van pulls into a strip mall. "David bakes when he's stressed. He's a stress baker."

"We do try not to provoke him, too much," Trent chuckles.

Jeff grins evilly. "But, if it happens to be a Friday afternoon and someone can cause him to go into a low grade baking rage, it's not a bad thing." He sobers a minute. "But, feel cookies are bad, Nick, and you know it!"

"They are," Trent agrees. His eyes flick over to the prosthetic leg, to his new classmate, and back to the Thai place.

He's left to contemplate this development, that cookies can be bad, as Nick pulls up to a parking space.

Jon fumbles in the glove compartment and thrusts a blue tag at Nick. "Use this. It can compensate for your parking job."

Nick lifts a choice finger from the wheel and points it at his classmate in the most amicable manner in which that finger could be used. "I'm a better parker than your sister."

Jon rolls his eyes. "Everyone is a better parker than my sister. Where do you think the damn flames came from?"

The other boys roll their eyes in unison as Nick parks the car. He goes around back (meeting Trent who someone manages to tumble over the seat) to re-assemble the wheelchair.

"You can give me my leg, now." Jon turns to Jeff.

No, I can't. Have you seen your fucking foot, mate?" The blond refuses. "Call this a medically sanctioned intervention."

"It's not that bad." The boy in front argues. "Just a couple of blisters, and some dry skin."

He has to laugh. "Yeah, that's not bad in the same way a dislocated hip isn't bad."

"Hunter has a point," Trent says, opening the side door. "Although I'm a little sad you let Jeff have your leg and not me."

"I'm not an idiot!" Jon defends himself.

"Debatable!" Jeff retorts. "The doctor said two weeks, minimum. We need you for sectionals. Shit me, I'm not listening to Seb bitch for a fucking month because you couldn't stay off your damn leg and he's not creative enough to choreograph for a one-legged beat boxer."

"Let's just get in and place the damn order, then." Jon snaps in defeat and gets out of the car. "At least Hunter and I can be a freak show together."

"Leave me the fuck out of it," He growls. It's one thing to know that he's different, and to let himself be that way. It's another when someone draws attention to it.

Trent brushes his arm, and he jerks it away like he's been shocked.

The world goes red, then white, then black, as the haze of fear closes in. "Don't touch me!" Tears prick the corner of his eyes. Damn it! Why does everyone think it's okay to act upon him?

He counts to ten, slowly, as Jeff crawls out over the driver's seat.

"Look, I'm tired," he says, finally. He reaches in the outer pocket of his bag for his prescription slips. If he had them, there'd be an Actiq sucker in there. "Just get me some mild curry, okay? And then let's go to the pharmacy and get the fuck back to school?"

Trent nods, subdued. He opens the van window, quietly, and shuts the door.

As the others go inside, he sits alone in the gathering twilight, breathing heavily. He hates himself. He hates his reaction. God damn it, his classmate should be able to touch him without sparking a panic attack. It's almost more debilitating than anything else.

_A/N: Sorry for the length of time it's taken me to get this done. Thank you for being patient. After Wednesday (oh, God, was it Wednesday?), I graded about a million (20) lab reports and messed up some code. And then everything caught up with me, including writer's block. But, I have a week without classes, a mostly clean apartment, and a double batch of feel cookies, so things are okay now._

_Rumpology is like palmistry for the behind. … I read about it once in a newspaper article and decided I had to use it here…_

_Shout outs to Pi-on-a-skateboard, PenMagic, Youdon'tknowme06 and NiffAreForever._

_Questions, Comments, concerns, critiques, or suggestions as to good, cheap Thai food in my vicinity are all welcome. – C65._


	20. Chapter 20

Blood roars in his ears and his heart pounds against his rib cage. Everything gets brighter, and be gets ready to fight off anyone who comes to threaten him.

His ribs, they're too tight. He can't breathe.

He can't breathe.

He tries counting. Inhale on the odds. Exhale on the evens. It's what a book he read when he was fourteen said to do. Maybe it started earlier, though. Back when he was young. He can hear a woman's voice, a real woman, not Sarai or Lara or his granddad, telling him to breathe and counting the breaths.

One, Two. Three, Four. Five, Six. Seven, Eight. Nine, Ten.

Back then, everything smelled like vanilla or strawberry or mint when he breathed. It was better than the plastic of the tubing, though, he supposes.

He reaches into the side pocket of his bag, where he keeps the medication, and finds a peppermint candy. He always keeps a supply of them in there. He slips it out of the crinkling plastic package and slides it into his mouth. Soon, his nose is filled with that familiar smell. Sharp, sweet, a reminder of when he was safe.

Back then, someone would hold him, and occasionally move his hand away when he twined his fingers through the tubing that went from an oxygen tank to his nose. They'd take his little hand with its cyanotic finger tips in their own and sing to him gently.

"_Way down yonder, down in the meadow,  
Poor little baby cryin' Mama  
Birds and butterflies flutter round his eyes,  
Poor little frog cryin' Mama."_

His voice breaks as he half sings, half whispers the last of the verse.

The fight goes out of him. He's tired. He's so tired. He just wants to curl somewhere and sleep. Somewhere safe, where no one will touch him or manipulate his body for him. He's so damn tired of the pain. He's so damn tired of the power plays. He's so damn tired of everything.

Tears fill his eyes, and one breaks the dam and rolls down his cheek.

He swipes at his cheek and eyes with a hand. The metal of his brace is cold and sharp. When he brings his hand down from his cheek, there's a smear of red on the silver.

The blood makes him angry. It's not the pain; the cuts on his cheek barely sting. Its that bleeding will make him weaker. It's that this shouldn't be a problem for anyone else, but for him, it is. Anger, though. Anger is good. Anger dries the tears, the embarrassing, revealing tears that let people know you have a weakness. Anger renews the fight in him. He will be strong. He will make it through. He will survive. Because he always has, mostly on his own. Except for Hunter. Hunter had saved him.

He lets himself be angry again, as he fumbles with the front pocket of his bag for the Ziploc of gauze. He presses it hard against his cheek, and starts to sing to himself again. The song bolsters his anger.

_I had entered into a marriage  
In the summer of my twenty-first year  
And the bells rang for our wedding,  
Only now do I remember it clear,  
All right, all right? All right._

He can do this. He can survive. Just like the rake. He can survive. He composes himself as the other boys exit the brick restaurant.

_A/N: This is not the chapter that I was originally going to put here (the next one is half written), but I felt like Hunter needed the private breakdown. And, now you know why Hunter sings and where he gets his lullaby. _

_First set of lyrics are a verse of "All the Pretty Little Horses" which may or may not actually belong to the original version. This is public domain (Thanks for letting me know!). The second set comes from the Rake's Song by _The Decemberists_. It's quite catchy, even considering the theme._

_Shout outs to Pi-on-a-skateboard, Youdon'tknowme06 and NiffAreForever! Thanks to all of you who are reading this (still)!_

_Questions (including if there's a medical concept here you think that needs to be explained and hasn't been), comments, concerns, critiques, suggestions, and/or ways to convince my muse that writing about signaling in the hypothalamus and endosomal trafficking for school would be _way _more fun than letting Hunter come have a breakdown on my couch while I listen would all be welcome._

_-C65._


	21. Chapter 21

"Twenty minutes!" Huffs Jon. "We should have called ahead."

Nick twitches the keys. "Well, we can wait here, or we can run to the pharmacy down the road. Or Hunter can wait for Monday."

"Sadist!" He coughs loudly enough for he others to hear him through the open window. Someone, Jeff he thinks, coughs back a laugh.

Trent opens the door. "We're assuming then that you want the prescription now?"

The obvious answer is yes, but he's been fucked with a few too many times. There have been lots of people who promised to take him to the pharmacy for refills and then couldn't meet their obligation. There have been plenty of adults who have taken away or withheld his pain medication because they could make a profit. Even Hunter could be a bastard about the off-campus prescriptions, even though he'd been a licensed driver with a car.

"Promise someone will drive me back here to get refills when I need them?" He hates how desperate he sounds.

The other four look at each other. Jon climbs into the front seat. "You can borrow the purple crotch rocket any time you want, as long as you have a license."

"The same applies to my Civic," Nick offers generously. "But Thad's a little more protective of his Impala, and it's a manual. And Seb's Beamer is ridiculous to insure."

His breathing moves closer to hyperventilating as Trent moves to get in the van. "I'll just sit behind Nick," he says quickly. He wants to avoid another incident, if he can help it. "And I can't drive. Prescription strength pain killers?"

He doesn't mention that he was too young to get a permit most of the time he was in Colorado. And, even if he had been old enough, his sisters weren't there to sign for him. Parent or Guardian. He definitely didn't have the first, and the second were frequently absent, leaving him almost emancipated in everything but name.

"Yeah, someone will take you," Trent promises more gently. "They take me almost everywhere I want to go. Except Home Depot. And Sears. And Radio Shack."

"That's because the thought of letting you loose in the wiring or small electronics section is terrifying, Trent." Jon settles his crutches between the front seats. "You barely survived model rockets, and your speakers don't work."

"Have you heard my late night Gaga?" Trent demands, looking from Jon to Jeff. "… Or any of my late night music?" The pair shake their heads in unison. "Then the damn speakers worked! I'll show you when we get back."

Jeff nods, but Jon is still pushing. "Hunt, do you know why we're not allowed toasters in the dorms?"

"It's because the buildings are old!" Trent shrieks before he can answer. "They're a fire risk if they're left unattended. It's not because of me!"

Nick throws the car into reverse. "Enough!" He bellows. "I don't care whose fault it is, or how the speakers work, but I can't drive with you guys bickering!"

They shut up. Jon fiddles with the radio, scanning for music. Jeff shakes a little and stares straight ahead. Trent pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and slides the back plate off with a click, then removes the battery and SIM card. He reassembles the phone as they pull into the pharmacy parking lot.

"Would it be quicker for me to just go in alone?" He asks, breaking the tense silence.

"Someone has to get out your wheelchair," Jeff points out. "So we might as well all go in."

Trent mutters, "It would be quicker without Silver."

"No one asked you, Toaster boy," Jon replies under his breath.

Inside the pharmacy, the boys split off. Nick and Trent go to look at school supplies because Trent insists he needs wooden pencils, while Jeff and Jon wait with him.

"You're being a bastard, mate." Jeff's tone is light and friendly. "You really shouldn't bait Trent. He worries, probably more than the rest of us."

"He's like a hen," retorts Jon. "Like a fucking mother hen."

Jeff sighs, and puts a gentle hand on Jon's arm. "He feels guilty."

"He shouldn't." A crutch hits the floor, emphatically. "It's not like I ever said anything about this to him."

"This is Trent," the blond reminds him. "Trent feels guilty about everything. His mom, Scotty, his dad, you, Wes, hell, he probably feels guilty about Hunter. And he keeps trying to make it better."

"He's not!" Jon explodes a little. "… And I'm not either. Goddammit, Jeff, I'm just so tired of this bullshit. All of it. He treats me like fucking glass, and then tries to fix stuff… and, it just gets worse."

"His heart is in the right place," Jeff argues.

Jon glares. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions. … And, it's my fucking leg, Jeff. My leg."

Jeff sighs. "Do you know why he does it?"

Jon shakes his head.

"Ask him, sometime," Jeff prompts. "Maybe not today, but sometime. Ask him why he takes apart toasters and servo motors and small electronics."

Jon sighs. "I'm just frustrated. We'll take some space. I'll swim. He'll find someone to hug and something to destroy… I'll apologize. He'll apologize. Maybe we'll go out to the barn and hit some things."

"Nick and I are going back to our room to hit some things later." Jeff has a twinkle in his eyes. "And you're not invited."

Jon's eyes flick toward an aisle. "Do you need me to get you guys stuff?"

"We have it covered," Jeff promises. "We're fucking careful. And the internet is a wonderful thing, mate."

Jon smiles. "I believe that you're fucking carefully?" Jeff ignores the bad joke.

He comes back from the pharmacy counter, the set of prescriptions stowed carefully in his backpack. He trusts Jeff and Jon, but he's not going to let them know where he put the painkillers. The bags of Factor VIII and IV supplies he's a bit more comfortable with. No one except Hunter has ever tried to take them, and even then, his old roommate had been really desperate. And he'd offered. So, that was different.

The trio head up a wide aisle to collect Nick and Trent. He thinks nothing of the contents of the shelf, but Jeff starts turning pink. And then giggle. And then Jon looks around and turns red.

"Can I help you gentlemen with something?" A dark haired girl with a long braid and a Crawford uniform asks them.

"N-n-no." Jon stammers. "We just must have turned down the wrong aisle."

It's only then that he realizes they are among pink, purple, black and green boxes of tampons and packages of sanitary pads. He puts his hands on his wheels, and gets the hell out of there as fast as he can. Women and their bodies are still a mystery to him, even more than men's bodies. And, if he's honest, he would rather keep it that way.

Reunited with Nick and Trent, they head toward the check out. Trent clutches a package of yellow pencils and a greeting card with a pumpkin on it.

Nick and Jeff try to be sneaky as they slip their hands into each other's back pockets. They're tentative about even this simple display of affection in public. It's something he knows a heterosexual couple would have done without thinking: as natural as holding hands or smiling.

Trent puts his package of pencils up on the counter, along with a box of condoms.

The man in front of them in line scowls. "I've got no problem with the gays," he tells the clerk. "I even like the funny red-head one on tv."

"Conan?" The pimple-faced boy asks lyconically.

The man pulls out his battered leather wallet, showing a hunting knife. "Nah, the one with the little Asian girl and the hot step mom. Hell, I laugh at 'em. I ain't got a problem with it. People can do what they want in their homes." A twenty is slapped down on the counter to pay for a lighter and some beef jerky. "But when they go out in public and startactin' … gay. It ain't right. It ain't Christian." The man shoots Nick and Jeff a dark look.

Nick pulls his hand from Jeff's pocket and takes a quick step away from his boyfriend. Trent turns red, then white, then gray. Jeff stares at the floor. Jon's knuckles turn white on the handles of his crutches.

He knows it can't be the first time they're heard something homophobic. It sounded like some of the ugly and stupid was coming from Nick's own family. But, like Jeff said, they're all tired. They're all stressed. And it always hurts worst when you hit an already-injured joint. He should know; he's had plenty of experience.

When the clerk doesn't say anything, just busies himself with making change, he decides he has to speak up. "And, like we all know, this is a Christian country, founded on Christian values." His voice drips sarcasm.

The man turns to find the speaker. His eyes flick over the group: at Nick busy studying the display of gum, at Trent clutching his pencils and breathing slowly, at Jeff who is counting the specks of dust on the linoleum. His eyes flick over Jon with his slowly mounting rage, and cool, sarcastic Hunter is his wheelchair. He refuses to look at the two disabled boys at first; they cannot possible be the ones defending the others.

The man's eyes land on him. "America is clearly a theocracy like Saudi Arabia," he enunciates, making it clear who is speaking.

The clerk starts fumbling with the manager call button as his patron goes red as well. "You don't know what the damn you're talking about, boy!" He snarls.

He shrugs one shoulder. "That's what they told me in Northern Idaho and the deep South when I asked about black people. I guess I just say a lot of wrong things. So, maybe you can explain to me, Mister, where in the Constitution it says we're a Christian country."

"One country, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Flustered, the older man shoves his wallet into the pocket of his Wrangler jeans.

"That's the pledge. Written by a communist, you know," He says, conversationally. He's had this argument before. Even post DADT, there were still a lot of homophobes in Colorado. And, while he'd never had a personal attachment to the issue, he'd enjoyed tweaking people. When he wasn't trying to keep his head down, it was one of his special skills. "I'll tell you what, though. I'll give you that one. Let's assume we _do _live in a Christian Country. Just for the sake of argument. Where in Christ's teachings does it say that two boys holding hands in public is a sin?"

The man thinks about it for a moment. "Leviticus."

"Holiness codes designed to define Jews from non-jews," Nick jumps into the argument. It's probably a good thing, if the dog-eared bible in his backpack and the small wooden cross around his neck are any indication. "Also, not followed by Christians."

"Poly-cotton blend," Trent mutters.

Jon shifts his weight, propping himself up to his considerable full height. Few of the Dalton boys are short, but Jon is one of the tallest. "Also, I believe it forbids lying with a man the way you lie with a woman. Nothing about hand holding."

The man is flustered. He reaches for the plastic bag with his purchases. "Still doesn't make it decent!" He mutters.

"Didn't Judas kiss Jesus in public?" Nick asks as the homophobic customer escapes out the door.

The clerk charges Trent for the pencils, but not the candy bar. "I never know how to handle that," he says, quietly. "I've come out online, but I don't feel safe here."

"We know," Trent smiles at him encouragingly. "And, if it helps, someday history will laugh at people like him."

"Tonight the internet is going to laugh or rage at people like him," the clerk promises. "Have a good night."

"You too." Trent says with a wink.

_A/N: So, I started this a few days ago, and I'm glad to have it up. I ask you bear with the boys. That they're tired, scared and not entirely at their best. Plus, they're in high school and if your high school was anything like mine, mood swings were not entirely uncommon? Finally, they're like brothers. And, brothers fight. Well, at least my brother and sister liked to fight with me. They still love each other, even though they're annoyed._

… _In regard to the potential criticism that I have put Hunter and Jon in the position of a straight saviors, it's probably accurate. I don't think that the others are incapable of defending themselves, their choices, anything. And, while they are self possessed, I think that Jeff and Nick are tired and hurt, while Trent is especially sensitive. Plus, Hunter and Jon were both itching for a fight. So… it may not excuse what I've written. I dunno. I'd love to hear thoughts on this issue. _

_If I might ask a favor… a friend of mine is about to start chemo for some pretty serious cancer. She's collecting a list of songs to make a playlist during chemo. If you have a moment, could you drop your favorite inspirational/uplifting/funny song off in her askbox on tumblr? You can do it anonymously if you don't have an account. Her user name is theysayiamadreamer. THANK YOU!_

_To answer NiffAreForever, yes, all the boys have backstories. And, more than one of them involves tragedy. Each of the Warblers have their own demons to battle. You've seen Jon's, and hints of Seb's, Jeff's, and Nick's (two of them even have other stories about their demons, even though they don't occur in this universe… if that makes sense?). But, Trent's are pretty serious and may come out soon. David, Thad, and Wes all have their own as well. I dunno, I find characters (and sometimes people) who don't have them static._

_Thank you for reading! Shout outs to NiffAreForever, PenMagic, Youdontknowme06, and Pi-on-a-skateboard. _

_Comments, questions, concerns, confusion, critiques all welcome. C65._


	22. Chapter 22

_**This chapter contains references to sexual assault. If you find this triggering, please do not read this chapter.**__  
I'm adding the warning to the summary. I'm happy to PM you (and I swear I will get back to you) with the other content. There are line breaks around the scene (because ff will not let me use the stars). More notes at the end._

In Dalton's kitchen, seven boys sit around the pale wooden table passing carry out containers of Thai food. They chatter quietly about their day, about spoons and tiaras and lullabies and legs and toasters and mobiles and the new boy, who is missing from their company.

He lies on his back, willing unconsciousness to claim him, only to realize that he is too exhausted to sleep. It will come, eventually, and take him away, but first, he will float here, in between the crisp white sheets Lara and Sarai know he prefers and underneath the fleecy gray blanket he bought for himself the one and only time he has ever run away from a placement. The sheets and the blanket comfort him, but the position does not. It reminds him of too many nights spent in the hospital, of too many days where he was too weak to fight back, and of the reason he ran away in the first place.

* * *

He was barely eleven: lithe, flexible, beautiful, and on the verge of puberty. He'd just been given a clean bill of healthy, or as clean a bill as he ever got, and his sisters had shipped him to a foster placement in West Virginia. It had seemed all right if a bit rural for his city boy tastes. His sisters were like that, though. He was never allowed to simply get comfortable in one area of the country or type of community. He'd been subjected to everything from Los Angeles to towns of less than 5000 people, sleepy bayous to Quebec and Maine to southern California.

His foster parents, the Bidemans' had been an older couple that had experience with "medically fragile" children. He hated that term, even then. It made him feel like some fancy puppet child, like the ceramic figurines Mrs. Bideman kept on a shelf in the living room. He tried to explain that he was fine, that he knew his limits and what he could and couldn't do, but his foster parents, his school, the whole fucking state of West Virginia were worried that if they left him alone for even a minute, he was going do start bleeding out of every pore in his body and die a gruesome death. (How was it even a state, he wasn't actually sure. It was like a tumor growing between Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky that had broken off and decided to become its own autonomous shit hole somewhere along the line.)

At school, they assigned Maribeth Cummings to be his aid. She was twenty-six, a high school graduate and a glorified baby sitter. Her job was to make sure that he didn't injure himself, somehow with the safety scissors that he was allowed to use in class. Also, apparently, to make sure that he didn't fail math because he did long hand multiplication in boxes with diagonal lines instead of down the page as they taught.

During gym class, when he was supposed to be working on during multiplication the _right _way (Even though he was faster than the rest of his classmates), she took him to the nurses' office, and made him lay on the bed. And…

He actually doesn't remember most of it. He doesn't want to remember any of it. But, he felt dirty. Used and dirty and empty and ashamed.

He locked himself in the shower and used all the hot water and then sat there as the cold water dripped around him and he shivered and stayed underneath the tap. Until his foster parents started banging on the door.

He didn't tell them what happened. He knew it was stupid to trust adults. He knew it was stupid to trust anyone except himself, and his granddad and may, just maybe, his sisters. Sometimes. At least, he can trust his sisters to be honest about what they're doing to him.

She did it again the next week, and he called his sisters. They told him to stick it out, that they can't find a placement for him right now. To suck it up; that most boys prayed to lose their virginity.

The third time it happened, his hip got dislocated and he ended up in the Emergency Room, trying to explain. But, he couldn't make the words come out of his mouth. So, that night, still on crutches and hyped up on painkillers, he ran away. He took a hundred dollars, and got on the midnight bus to New York to find his sisters.

* * *

Damn it, he doesn't want to think about this. If he does, he will never sleep. He crawls to the end of his bed, and realizes that he can't get into his trunk of medications easily. He slithers onto the floor, and fishes out the bottle of melatonin and the bottle of anti-histamines. He takes the pills dry, and lies back, waiting for them to take effect.

He hates relying on the drugs, but they give him dreamless sleep. And right now, he needs to sleep without nightmares. So, he stays underneath the cover of his fears and his monsters and waits for sleep to claim him.

_A/N: Having hated so much on West Virginia, I wish to make the following disclaimer that I have never actually been there. Also that it is undoubtedly a beautiful state, and much of the animosity here is not due to the state or the people but the circumstances in which the character found himself._

_For those medical sticklers, Hunt takes anti-histamines which do not contain analgesics of any type to sleep._

_Also sorry about how long it took to publish this. I've been trying to write this chapter in my head for several days. It started out much lighter, and well… I suppose that's to come. The bad news is that someone has proved my hypothesis. Twice. … Also that I started a new medication that basically makes me a zombie one day a week (which I took just before I discovered the first round of hypothesis proving and then wrote a proposal in 3.5 days and then slept for one). The good news is that (1) I was right and (2) I have amazing friends. _

_A SERIOUS "Thank you" to everyone who has reviewed this. I read them multiple times on the bus between home and campus while I was working on stuff and they kept me going (and from going entirely crazy). Seriously, you are amazing. ... And I promise Trent's history with electronics will be revealed in a upcoming chapter (SOON). _

_Questions, comments, concerns, critiques, or suggestions for a new unsolved scientific problem are all welcome. – C65_


	23. Chapter 23

Even with the pills, he still manages to dream.

Faces swirl together into a monster without an identity. Hands grab at him, trying to force him to go in one direction or another. They tug at his clothing and his body.

He is suddenly, magically naked and they dress him. White boxer shorts and a white undershirt. Jeans are thrust onto his body and zipped tight, before they are whipped off just as quickly. There are a pair of chinos, then gray wool trousers, then jeans again. Shirts fly just as fast. A set of layered thermal shirts. A button down and a tie. A suit jacket. A leather vest and handcuffs. His glasses flicker on and off his face so quickly that his eyes do not have time to adjust to the sudden changes. The world is a spinning, blurred kaleidoscope, and he thinks he's going to be sick.

The people, they act _on _him, and in that action, he becomes an object. A mannequin, a doll, a non-entity. Something to pick up and manipulate when is needed or wanted: to brush its hair, to bring to bed at night, to cry into and whisper secrets to and then to be locked away in a cupboard or put up on a high shelf when play time was over.

He wakes himself up screaming. The first time it happens, he assumes that he's simply being weak. The second time, he goes and finds more drugs. They just trap his in the nightmares.

It's not until dawn creeps in, gray and cold and accompanied by the feeling of rain in his right knee, right hip and right ankle that he falls into anything that could be termed restful. And, he stays that way, unconscious and peaceful until late in the day.

* * *

He rises early Sunday morning, ravenous. He's barely eaten in more than twenty four hours, and his body is reminding him that the behavior is _not _okay. He rushes through his morning rituals of evaluating, swearing, aligning, swearing, stretching, swearing, cleaning, swearing, swallowing his pills, swearing, dressing and swearing.

He braces his ankle in one of the bulky, rigid AFOs. It holds his weight with minimal pain. Not a problem. He re-wraps his knee, and tries his weight on it. He knows it's too soon post injury, but the knowledge doesn't stop him from at least trying. He regrets the decision when he collapses back on the bed, breathing heavily.

Even though another day in a wheelchair would probably be best, he sets his crutches under his arms, unlocks his door, and takes the elevator downstairs.

He follows his nose and his ears to the kitchen. Jon is leaning against the counter, eating a piece of toast in one hand, and making shooing motions at Trent with the other. Trent sits on a low stool, his mouth full of pins, folding up the empty bottom of his roommate's trousers.

"Church?" Nick asks, by way of greeting. "You missed the synagog last night, but we're headed to services at nine. Or, Thad's off to Catholic mass at ten, and Francis goes to Episcopalian at ten-thirty. Or, we could find you something else?"

"Pastafarianism? Free thinking? Deism? Atheism? Galfryianism?" Trent's are muffled through a mouthful of pins. "Personally, I mourn the loss of pirates in the world."

"Toasters?" Jon snags a pancake off a pile as the black boy, David(?), walks by.

Trent fiddles with the pants leg.

"Oww! Be careful!" Jon whines through a mouthful of pancake. "That was my toe, not a fold!"

"Sorry!" Trent mumbles. "Its hard to tell the difference sometimes."

"Hunter, I'm David," the boy with the plate of pancakes offers his a fluffy stack.

"Nice to meet you." He remembers something odd about David that had been said earlier. "Are these … feel pancakes?"

Jon and Trent laugh. "Today, he's procrastibaking."

"Shut up, or no fluffy deliciousness for you!" David focuses on him. "There's syrup on the stove, or jam or honey. And bacon. And eggs. And oatmeal. Pick your poison."

"Shh! David! You're not supposed to tell the new kid about the poison until _after _he eats." A short boy with a helmet of black hair and heavy, triangle-shaped eyebrows chides. "That way, he'll be addicted and won't be able to leave!"

"Be quiet, Blaine. We need someone to go to Mordor to destroy a horcrux." David stabs three pancakes with a fork and puts them on a plate in front of the newcomer.

"All done." Trent laughs, and pat's Jon's leg.

Nick comes into the kitchen. "All ready?"

"Just need to get something from upstairs." Jon crutches toward the door.

Nick studies the pancakes. "I'd break my diet for these, but then Jeff would banish me. What do you do, David, put crack in these?"

David slaps Nick's hand and takes. "Not worth it, Nick. Although, that's what Potter just claimed."

Blaine sighs. "You know that's why I stayed, right?"

"I thought your parents refused to let you get a place in Lima by yourself at sixteen… something about it turning into a den of inequity." Trent slides in next to Blaine, lightly brushing his arm. The two boys seem to relish the contact.

The ravenette ignores his friend, and continues eating with abandon. Someone that small should not be able to consume quite so much or so fastidiously.

Another dark haired boy, one he vaguely recognizes as a dancer from the clinic a few days ago, comes in. A set of rosewood beads arranged in lines of ten and one peak out of the boy's pocket, and a hymnal is under his arm. He carries an antique cigar box. "I'm off to cantor, if anyone needs a ride."

"I'm going to go call my family." Trent slips out, quickly.

Blaine buries his face in the pancakes. "I need to catch up on Calc."

"Not Catholic." He says. Not anything, really. He's not a fan of organized religion. Too many people trying to touch him and offering to pray for his healing. As though he was made broken, and only they can save him. His body can be damn annoying sometimes, but it is his. And, he wants to deal with it on his own terms. He wants to have respect, and agency, not pity.

"Go. If I have to hear you try to sing the counter-melody on Shepard Me, O God" one more in falsetto, I will make the state permanent," David threatens. "Actually, just stay away from anything in falsetto. You make an ugly girl."

Thad winces.

"Are you taking the spoons for some reason?" The black boy motions to the wooden box his friend carries.

Thad extends the box to the new boy. "I brought my spoon bank for Hunter."

David snorts with laughter. "Have you offered them to Nick?"

"Required a deposit from him, earlier." Thad retorts. "But, just in case you need extra, we have some." And then, he skips out, the rosary beads making a quiet click.

He turns to the others. "There's something going on here that I don't understand. Why did he give me spoons?"

"Have you heard of the Spoon Theory?" Blaine asks, re-engaging in the conversation.

He shakes his head.

"It was originally designed for some autoimmune disease," David calls from the stove where he's put more batter on the griddle. "Lupus, wasn't it?"

"Lupus," Blaine agrees. "Anyway, the idea is that you get a certain number of spoons each day. And, everything you do costs spoons. Like, getting ready in the morning. Or making pancakes. Or figuring out the mysteries of Taylor Series."

"Or the mystery of Taylor Swift's boyfriends. Most people have more spoons than they need." David motions to himself and Blaine. "But other people, like our friend Wes, and probably you, don't have as many. Or else spend them more quickly. Wes says pain costs."

He nods. It's true: pain takes energy.

"Thad started the box as a joke, when Wes was first getting sick." David flips a golden brown cake on the griddle. "Because sometimes Thad is an asshole."

"But his heart is in the right place." Blaine uses his fork to write the letters K-U-R-T in his syrup, and then scratches them out.

David spoons more batter onto the pan. "Still an asshole. But, anyway, he thought that after Friday, you should know that we have a spoon bank. You know, in case you need extras."

He opens the box, cautiously. Sure enough, it's full of tarnished silver spoons, probably collected from antique stores and yard sales. There's also a bottle of five-hour energy, a tube of gel frosting, some granola bars prominently labeled, "Gluten Free", and some Excedrin Migraine.

"Anything you want to add?" David nudges the edge of a pancake with his spatula.

"Acetominophen." He closes the lid. "But, I'm good for now. Do you want help with the dishes?"

"Nah," David grins. "Jeff is going to come do them. Pay back for last night."

"Last night?" He feels like he will never catch up with the Dalton boys. They all seem to know something that's going on, and he doesn't.

Blaine rolls his eyes. "That's not fair. We were playing musical bingo. It's not his fault that you had to sing _I feel pretty_ in a nightgown."

"He had a nightgown!" David points out. "And a wig!"

"You looked beautiful." Blaine insists.

"And then, he posted it on Youtube!" David complains.

Blaine frowns. "But, that's a breach of sacred musical bingo law. He must pay!"

"Thus making him clean up." David explains. "If you're done eating, shoo. Go solve calculus or whatever the hell you do."

Blaine shrugs. "If you insist."

"I do."

He has nowhere to go, so he stays. He supposes he could return to his empty room, and read for a while. Or ask about the pool that Jon mentioned on Friday. But, he doesn't want to be alone.

David is cheerful. He turns on some Motown, and sings along as he bustles around the kitchen. His Diana Ross impression is surprisingly good.

"You know we didn't mean any harm by the spoons?" David asks, twisting to _Heatwave_.

He smiles. "I know. You guys can just be … exuberant?"

David laughs. "Oh, God. You don't know the half of it! Although, you're not bad about jumping in, either, it sounds like. Trent told us about the pharmacy."

"I just hate bigots," he says with a shrug. "I'm allergic to stupid."

David flicks a towel over his shoulder and stacks pans in the sink. "We're pretty careful about that here. Most of us… we're… we're broken in one way or another." He busies himself with running the water, even though he said he was going to leave the dishes for Jeff. "Dalton started as a refuge, and it still is that for a lot of us."

"Is that a threat, or an explanation?" He keeps his voice even and emotionless.

David shrugs and slides a bowl of pancake batter into the fridge. "Take it as you will. We're close knit because this is the only family some of us have. If we fight, it's because we're brothers."

He rolls his eyes. "I noticed that the only people allowed to insult Trent were Jon, Nick and Jeff."

"Well, Thad and I and Blaine are allowed, too. … And Tonio, and. You get the idea." David smiles and loads the plates into the dishwasher. He looks at the griddle with disgust. "I'm leaving that for Trent."

A tall dark haired boy with glasses, clutching a pair of dress shoes, into the kitchen. "David! I'm about to leave for church, but Trent's headed to the physics lab and Blaine… Blaine is in the music room playing Teenage Dream and sobbing."

David glances over at him. "So, New Boy, are you ready to be indoctrinated into the Dalton family?"

His heart speeds up, but he tries to keep his response casual.

"Sam will show you to the labs on his way." David is briskly drying his hands. "Don't worry, Trent hasn't electrocuted anyone in …"

"Five months and six days," Sam supplies.

"Right. Almost six months," David continues. "I'll go handle the latest Klaine crisis."

He feels a bit bewildered as Sam shows him out of the kitchen. Whatever the hell is going on here, he's pretty sure that he's about to be indoctrinated into Dalton's insanity.

_A/N: The Spoon Theory was written by Christina Miserandino and can be found at YouDontLookSick .com (which will hopefully show when I post this). It's one of the best explanations of what life is like with a chronic disease, especially one that causeor pain or fatigue, that Ive read, although I think it's more widely applicable. The spoon bank, with real antique spoons was suggested by my friend Lilly._

_Yes, his sisters are horrible. They're also struggling and distant. But, they're some of the only constants in his life, and so he sticks with them. Because it's better to have the known that the unknown, I think. Trent's story coming soon. _

_Questions, comments, critiques, complaints, suggestions, requests, prompts, or creative new ways to embarrass my brother at his high school graduation all welcome. –C65_


	24. Interlude 2: Opera and CAG repeats

Trent escapes the cheery kitchen just before his phone rings. Never before has Nicki Minaj sounded quite so much like the harbringer of the apocalypse.

He clicks the talk button. His twin calls every week at this time. Unless Scotty has lost phone privileges or something. "Hi Scotty."

"Hi Trent." Scotty might have called him something else, or made a reference to Trent's sexuality if the phone calls between the twins weren't closely monitored. He skips directly to the unpleasantries. "Have you thought about it, yet?"

"Yes." Trent has through about this a great deal. He's thought about it nearly every day since he was eight year old and first learned the name and the cause of the disease that was slowly robbing him of his father. And, the truth is, that he's known his answer almost since that day. "And, I haven't changed my mind."

"You've still got four months. You might still." Scotty argues, like he does every time they talk about this. Which is basically every time they talk.

Trent sighs. "Look, I don't want to do it, Scott."

He doesn't think he's going to change his mind. It's not like you can prevent Huntington's by knowing if you carry the gene or not. Their father had gotten tested when they were five, when he'd started showing minor symptoms. The kind of thing that could be attributed to being busy running one's own business and raising two rambunctious boys. Things like forgetting keys, or being irritable after a long day. Finding out he carried the log CAG repeats that spelled doom didn't make Scott Nixon happy. It robbed him of the future he'd been planning for: dreams of a second home on a lake were replace by lists of nursing homes.

"Fuck you," Scotty whispers through the phone line. "I'm gonna do it when I turn 18. I want to know."

"You can't." Trent reminds his twin. His identical twin. They're what the genetic counselors call monozygotic. Sharing an entire genome. Including that gene on Chromosome 4 that encodes the protein currently eating through his father's nerves. The gene that you only need one copy of to have your body fall apart. "You can't get tested without my consent because it violates my right to know. We've talked to the lawyer and the counselors. It's my right."

"Fuck you, and your rights, you little fairy." Scotty hisses.

There is static and a crackle on the end of the line and a calm male voice comes on. "I'm sorry, Scott just lost his phone privileges. You can try again in three weeks."

"Thank you." Trent says quietly, just like every time he talks to his brother and then his brother's warden or counselor or whatever the hell you called the people who ran juvie. "Could you give him a message, for me?" His voice is plaintive.

He can hear the guard softening on the phone.

"Can you tell him that even though I say no, he's still my brother?" Trent has repeated these words so many times over the last six months, ever since Scotty got busted for larceny and drug trafficking.

The phone clicks quietly, letting him know the guard has disconnected.

Trent rests his head on the cool laminate of the table. His feet have brought him to the physics lab without him knowing what they were doing. It's almost instinctual, now.

He thinks about calling his grandfather, but he's not sure he can have a civil conversation at the moment.

He doesn't understand why life is quite so confusing right now. Or why Scotty wants to know so badly. They're still years away from having children, he hopes. He doesn't actually plan to father them: his partner can be the donor or they can adopt. It won't change the way he feels about his son or daughter. Shared DNA isn't what makes a family. As for Scotty... well, his brother might like girls, but he sure as hell had better not be making babies while they're 17. And, Trent thinks he could put up with a niece or nephew being tested. Even though if the tested positive, it would mean the same as if Scotty does. But, with his brother's child, he can pretend that maybe the 1 in 4 chance came from the child's mother and not their bad DNA.

He puts the CD he always carries in the small player in the corner of the room, and cues up a song. The time on his phone dings. If Scotty hadn't lost his phone privilliages for being an ass, his call to their father in the nursing home would just be ending.

Trent dials the familiar number from memory. It's an old metric to test himself: a way to determine if his memory is as sharp as it should be, or if this is the beginning of his inevitable fall into losing himself. Nine numbers fill his head, and the phone rings.

A cheerful nurse answers, and he asks for his father.

"Hi Dad. How are you?"

Silence.

"My week was pretty good. We're finishing limits in calculus. Remember how you used to tell us that you loved us as many numbers as were between here and the limit as we approached x? Well, I finally get it, Dad.

Silence.

"There's a new boy in school, Hunter. Jon thinks he's a spy or something. I just think Jon is bored. … Remember how I told you last year that he made a bunch of body part mobiles and tried to sell them at the school art show because he was bored? I think it's the same thing."

Silence.

"Sectionals is at Thanksgiving this year, Dad. Scotty already said he wouldn't come." Actually, Scotty had said that he wouldn't be caught dead at a fairy fest like that. Except he hadn't used the word "fairy." "But Granddad said that he'd bring you, if you wanted. And then we could have thanksgiving dinner, together?"

Silence.

Trent feels his throat starting to close up. He fights to keep his voice steady. "I've got to go, Dad. I love you."

The nurse comes back on the line. "Talk to you next week, Trent?"

"Yes," he says, quietly. "Same time next week. Thanks, Sammy."

"You're a good boy, Trent."

He presses the button for the CD player as soon as he hangs up the phone. Carmen's _Habanera _fills the room. The meso-soprano's song echoes over the familiar line of cellos and claranets.

His phone rings again.

"Hi Baby," A female voice that he's been waiting and wanting to hear for years coos in his ear. "How are you?"

His heart leaps for a moment and there are so many questions that he wants to ask. "How the fuck did you go my number?" He demands.

"It wasn't easy," his mom replies. "And, it doesn't matter. I'm here, now, Trenty."

He feels himself filling with cold, empty anger. What wasn't easy? Walking out on your twin sons and sick husband when things were starting to get bad? Getting a job as a sex worker? Never calling? Finding out that their mother had just _disappeared_ the day before Thanksgiving had been easy for two six year olds. Hiding the fact that their dad was too sick to take care of them had been a sinch. Oh, and moving in with their grandfather and putting their dad in a nursing home? Walk in the park. Yeah, he and Scotty, they'd had it so much easier compared to their mother.

His voice is cold, and dispassionate and empty. "I don't want to talk to you. Don't call me again. Just go back to being a whore."

He hangs up the phone with an almost calm pressing of the end button. There was a time when hanging up the phone happened with a satisfying click. There is nothing calming or satisfying about pressing a button on a screen.

He needs to take something apart.

There are three locked drawers along the wall labeled "Nixon1", "Nixon2" and "Nixon3". The agreement with the physics teacher, with his therapist, and with the school is that he works through the boxes in order. One is a circuit board and cards of problems. Basically extra credit for physics. Nothing terribly dangerous. Two is supplies to create an amplifier. Three is an old toaster from a pawn shop.

Trent's hands do not shake as he turns the key for three and lifts out the white metal box. He carries it back to the table. His hands remain steady as he removes a small set of tools. These, too, are placed beside the toaster. The CD of calming instruments he crushes under his heel. The sound of breaking glass is more satisfying than any music, except maybe Carmen's _March of the Toreadors_. One of the most famous pieces in all of Opera plays in the background as he systemically rips the instruction booklet to shreds.

"Whore." He says, picking up the toaster and hefting it. "Fucking prostitute."

He throws the toaster at the wall, the way his dad had done when they found out his mother was not coming back. It hits with a sharp crack.

Scott Nixon spent the next two years trying to fi the toaster. He tried himself, until his hands became too unsteady to hold a screwdriver. Then, he passed the project to his sons. It was only after he gave the same instruction three times that the boys got worried. It was only after they lit the apartment on fire that the authorities found out and forcibly removed them.

It may not be reasonable, but Trent _knows _that if he can fix a toaster without instructions, everything will be all right again with his family. His father will comeback into himself and be able to care about his sons. The eleven years his mother has been absent will disappear. His brother will give up this ridiculous notion of getting tested for HD. …His brother won't have sold drugs to raise the money to find a genetic counselor in Australia or England or someplace where they can't confirm that he is a monozygotic twin. If he can just fix the damn toaster, everything will be right again with the world.

He picks up the small metal box, and throws it against the ciderblock wall, again. The science labs are located in a newer part of campus, built from something that's harder to burn down or explode. The crack is satisfying.

He retrieves the box to throw a third time. He takes aim, and the toaster thuds into the wall only six inches from Sam's head as he enters the room.

Trent's stomach falls as his fellow Warbler, and Hunter come into the room. He fishes a screwdriver out from the case. "I'm fine." His voice is flat, and emotionless. It's the opposite of Trent.

"Good luck," Sam tells Hunter. "I'm sorry, I have to go."

The new boys stands awkwardly in the doorway, watching as Trent pries the now-dented silver box from the toaster. Trent ignores him.

Finally, it gets to be too much. "Can I sit down?" Hunter asks, quietly. "I won't do anything else, just sit?"

Trent shrugs. "If you want to." His voice is still flat. Carmen plays on.

Hunter pulls out a seat, and Trent continues working on the toaster as the Spanish gypsy swirls into her own tragedy.

_A/N: Huntington's Disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disease which typically manifests around the age of 40 or later. Children whose parents are affected have a 50% chance of inheriting the condition, since only one copy of the gene is required to have the mutation. A test was developed in the late 80's (I think 1989?) which accurately detects the underlying mutation, and it has been widely used. However, the decision of an individual at risk (someone with a parent or grandparent with HD) to undergo genetic testing is left to them, since there is no treatment or cure. The issue of identical twins further complicates HD testing, since both twins essentially share a genome (monozygotic means that they came from the same egg and sperm), and one cannot get tested without the consent of the other (unless consent cannot be given) because it is a violation of the right not to know._

_Thank you for being patient with me. I think I've finally managed to write a proposal that can be used (5 topics, 4 specific aims and 2 full proposals later). So, hopefully, there will be no more weeks where I write one in 72 hours and then spend the next 72 trying to recover. _

_The music referenced here is generally from the Opera, _Carmen_, which is one of my favorites (admittedly one of only three I've seen, but still a favorite). You would recognize the tune to most of the songs, but if you're curious, I suggest looking them up on Youtube._

_Thanks to Pi-on-a-skateboard for discussing both Trent's style of anger and his family background._

_Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me thus far. Shout outs to NiffAreForever, PenMagic, Youdontknownme06 and Pi-on-a-skateboard._

_Questions, Comments, Concerns, Critiques, etc. all welcome. –C65_


	25. Chapter 25

Sam leads the way through the school at a clipped pace. "English is down there," the boy with earrings directs. "And foreign languages past here."

He nods, and tries to take in the information for tomorrow. He's really regretting the decision to use crutches today. Of course, he hadn't known he'd be sent on this wild goose chase to find and comfort a near stranger when he woke up. But, he should have known _something _was going to happen. His life has never exactly been neat.

They duck into a newer part of the building, built out of institutional white blocks. It's a stark contrast to the old elegance of the hard wood and brick used to build the rest of the school. "Science," Sam explains. "Designed so we can't blow it up."

"That's been a problem?"

"The honors chemistry class has had more than its fair share of pyros in the past. I think the most recent excuse was that it was hard to see rust-colored powder forming in royal blue liquid." Sam shrugs. "And the physics teacher might have offered to sell the AP physics Class of 2010 his 1977 Ford Pinto if they could raise the money, build a trebuchet and all get 5's on the AP exam."

He nods. He's not sure how to interpret this. … Weren't Pintos the cars that exploded on contact?

Sam flinches as a small, sharp metal box hits the wall next to his head with enough force to leave a dent. "Fuck, Trent. Are you okay?"

Trent picks up the toaster before he answers. "I'm fine." His voice and his eyes are empty, as though everything that makes Trent himself is gone. All that's left is something burning deep down inside.

Sam looks scared. He's not sure he blames the other boy. Having small household appliances thrown at your head isn't exactly a normal part of anyone's duties. "Good luck. I'm sorry, I've got to go." And then, Sam runs away.

He can't exactly accuse the other boy of cowardice. He's nervous, too. But, he was sent here. There have been times in his life, times he suppresses, when people have tried to do this for him. And maybe he's here because he's never gotten to repay the favor. Maybe it's his turn to pay things forward.

He stands awkwardly in the doorway, balancing on his crutches. His knee is starting to hurt again. It's a hollow pain, it feels like someone has taken an ice cream scoop and dug out a chunk of the cartilage and bone, leaving emptiness behind. Only the emptiness aches. His ankle isn't terribly happy with him, either. It's amazing how it can start swelling without warning, leaving him screaming against a brace that's too small.

Some sort of powerful, emotive classical music plays. He's not sure what Trent is listening to, but it's hard not to sway along.

Finally, the pain becomes too much. "Can I sit down? I won't do anything else. I won't touch you. I just need to sit."

Trent doesn't look up from the toaster. He just shrugs with one shoulder. "If you want to." His voice is colder and flatter than a frozen lake in Feburary.

He pulls out a seat, and settles himself. He ends up propping up both feet. He would kick off his shoes, and slide his swelling ankle out of the AFO, but he doesn't think it's a good idea to interrupt Trent more than he has to.

He regrets not bringing an Actiq sucker. He could use one right now.

The music runs out. The only sound in the class room is their breathing and the sound of metal-on-metal as Trent systemically dismantals the toaster.

Finally, the brunette's head hits the table, his arms splayed to either side. "I can't do it." There's a tremor in the voice. "I can't fucking do it."

He knows what he has to do. It's something he's never been sure he could do, but it's what he needs to do now. He braces himself against the edge of the desks and limps around to sit beside the other boy. It takes far longer than it should.

He places a gentle hand on Trent's shoulder. He tries to be gentle, but also convey strength and protection. It's the way he wishes someone would touch him, once in a while. "If you need me to listen, I'm here."

"I can't fucking do it." Trent repeats, lifting his head just enough that it bounces when it hits again. "I can't. I can't. I can't." His voice breaks.

"You don't have to." The words are spoken through him. He doesn't know where they come from, but they're what he must say.

Tears stream down Trent's cheeks. "I do, but I don't. And, I can't! Because I can't live with it… If I know… If I have it… If it's true… I can't live with that. I'll die before I'll let myself go. I'll kill myself."

He gathers Trent into his arms, lifting the other boy against him. "Shhh," he says, trying to quiet his own demons as much as his companions. Now is _not _the time for his body to start freaking out about contact. "Shh. No one is going to die. No one is going to make you do it."

He rocks Trent gently as tears stream down both their cheeks.

_A/N: Ford Pintos are famous in the US for exploding when rear-ended. A case brought in 1977 forced the recall of thousands of automobiles._

_I'll point out (as has been pointed out to me) that the difference between Hunter being touched and what happens in this chapter is that Hunter has control. So, while he doesn't draw comfort from the contact, he can handle it better than when it's on someone else's terms._

_Questions, Comments, Concerns, Critiques, Suggestions, Prompts, or sticker I should use on my student's work when I run out of gold stars all welcome. –C65_


	26. Chapter 26

They stay locked for more heartbeats than he can count. Trent slows from shuddering sobs to whimpers to slow hitches to even breaths. Eventually, the torrent of tears slows to a trickle, and dries up all together. And, somehow, he manages to hold onto Trent without losing his own breath, without wanting to throw up, without being overwhelmed at all.

"I'm sorry," Trent sniffles, and wriggles out of his arms. "I know you don't like to be touched."

"It's okay," he shrugs, trying to be casual about the first prolonged human contact he's had in ages. "It's just… better? if I'm the one to initiate it?"

Trent nods, and scoots back. "Sort of a trigger?"

"I guess. I just… not a lot…" He shrugs. "Most of the time, growing up, touching didn't mean good things. It was doctors or nurses."

"What about your family?" Trent looks genuinely curious.

Another shrug. "What about my family? My granddad might have, maybe, but not my sisters." His laugh is mirthless. "They're not exactly that you'd call affectionate." He ignores the fact that Hunter Clarington was an only child whose parents managed to be both absent and helicopter-esque in an absolutely obnoxious combination.

Trent's expression darkens.

"Look, my parents were gone by the time I was seven." He sighs. "I grew up in and out of hospitals and foster homes. I just … don't do touch, normally, okay?"

Trent fiddles releases a final screw and flips the metal casing off the toaster. "I'll try to reign myself in. It's just hard. My dad, my granddad, heck, even my … brother, they're all physically. Not in a bad way… even Scotty hugs me sometimes. I mean, he's as likely to kick me in the nuts as hug me, but when he does, it's safe?"

His foot cannot stay in the damn shoe any longer. He unlaces the trainer. "Scotty?"

"My damn twin." Trent hits the table with surprising force. "Stubborn, intelligent, creative, passionate, and occasionally almost feral."

He raises an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure that most people would say you're the good twin."

Trent laughs manically. "That's what we want you to think!" He sobers, after a minute. "We're just on … different sides of a difficult issue."

He gets the brace off. It takes some effort to get his inflamed ankle out, but he manages it. He props his sock-clad foot up on a chair and throws the shoe and AFO onto the table. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Trent fiddles with the toaster and pulls out a crumb drawer. It's empty. "Not right now. I'd rather talk about how thin the walls are at Dalton. There was … someone screaming last night."

"I don't want to talk about it." He words are hard and harsh, a defense mechanism designed to shut down any attempts at counseling. Its better if he can just ride the nightmares out. Better to cope the way he always has than to try something new and get half way through.

"Well, I'd prefer not to think about how many times Niff did it last night, too," Trent says, his tone serious in contrast to his light-hearted comment. "But your defensiveness suggests that you might have been the one. For all I knew, it was Thad. Or Jeff. Or Sam. Even Jonny sometimes has nightmares, although I usually know about them." Trent tests the springs on the lever, and determines them to be broken. It's possible they worked before their collision with the wall, but it's hard to say.

He has done enough emotional sharing for one day. He's spent. He picks up his discarded brace and roughly shoves his foot into it. "Look, I said I don't want to talk about it."

Trent shrugs. "I just want you to know."

He shoves his foot into his shoe, and reaches under the table for his crutches. He reaches down for his crutches. Trent has a casual foot on them. "Move your foot." The words are forced through clenched teeth.

Trent looks down, blushes, and quickly adjusts his position. "I'm so sorry!" His apology is profuse. "I didn't realize. I wouldn't…"

"For a nice guy, you're really a bastard." He grinds out over Trent's apology. He fits the crutches under his arms, and starts making his way toward the door. It hurts like hell. His ankle is nowhere near better enough for this.

Trent laughs, the sound clear and without malice. "I think Jon and Scotty are the only two who would agree with you."

He has perfected a shrug on crutches. "I guess most other people aren't as good judges of character."

Trent uses a par of tweezers to disentangle the spring from the toaster. "There's a reason they call me the Hulk…"

"And I suppose that makes your incarcerated twin Dr. Jeckyll?" He turns back from the door. He tries to keep from wincing as the AFO presses against his swelling ankle. He really hopes that it doesn't rub his skin raw, or worse, cut him.

"Actually, I'd Dr. Banner and he's Dr. Jeckyll." Trent begins to test the spring between his fingers. "And while I realize there isn't much difference between a potion and gamma radiaton, Banner manages to control his anger while Jeckyll succumbs." Trent seems to notice the way he's becoming increasing pale. "Sit down and at least let me text somebody to come with your wheelchair!"

"It's fine." He limps back to his seat and props up the swelling ankle. "And I suppose David is a Cyrano? … Or is that Jeff?"

"Actually, Long Jon Silver and Blaine do most of our arranging. That's currently the closest thing we have to an Cyrano. Unless you mean Thad's tendency to impersonate Captain Jack Harkness on every occasion possible… and then he'd refuse help even if it was offered." Trent unwinds another spring from the toaster. "I mean, we have some older stuff that other people have done, but when you're famous for Top 40's…" He shrugs. "It takes work to keep our repatoir up to date."

He's confused, now. "Your repertoire?"

"The Warblers. Our show choir." Trent grins. "Oh, God. I know you can sing. I heard you. You're going to try out. And you're going to love it."

"He's gonna love what, mate?" Jeff bursts into the room, grinning. "Warblers? We've got practice this arvo."

"No, I'm not." Show choir brings up too many bittersweet memories of Colorado and Hunter and Evens … and what happened to them. "I'm not joining any choir. I'm focusing on school work."

"At least come," Trent wheedles. "You've slept more than any person has a right to, and you don't have any homework because you haven't been to any classes."

"No." He insists. He gathers his crutches and his demons and slowly limps out of the room.

Behind him, he hears Jeff turn to Trent. "Fuck, what's up his ass?"

Trent's sigh is audible. "You just missed an explosion."

"Looks like the fucking toaster was a victim. Scotty, again?"

Another sigh. "Why are there so many assholes?"

_A/N: Another week, another chapter. I've been working on this since last Sunday. And, believe it or not, I actually researched toaster repair for this…_

_I apologize to everyone who I haven't answered or talked to. Suffice to say that this month has been hard for a number of IRL reasons (April Snow, proposal writing, Dementors haunting me) but I think they're finally starting to get better. Including the fact that I submit my final proposal for the semester tomorrow. And hopefully it meets with professorial approval and I don't have to redo it. Again. (They say sixth topic is the charm...)_

_Anyway, I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for stick with me through this. And, I promise, I have plans. (Muwhahaha). -C65._


	27. Chapter 27

He drags his feet (figurative) and protests, but somehow, at three o'clock, he finds himself captive for Warbler practice. Jeff and Trent found him around two thirty, and pestered him until he wheeled after them to the music room on the first floor. The devious pair had strategically placed him on a sofa that didn't look plush from afar; but he sunk deeply into the cushions. To keep him in place, a stubborn, pale Sebastian and cross looking Jon flanked either side. If he didn't want to touch either of the others, he was stuck.

The room is crowded, but he recognizes a few faces. Thad and David sit together behind a table with a gavel in the center. David has a CD player, and Thad is holding a stack of forms in front of him. Blaine sits at the piano bench, idylly fingering a few cords. He looks sad. Jeff and Nick share an –straight-backed Victorian chair that was likely designed for ladies at tea and not the loose, draping limbs of a pair of teenage boys in lust. Trent is sitting on another couch, talking with an African American boy with a fro. Sam joined a group of younger boys, and they slouch together on the floor.

David bangs the gavel.

Jon leans across him. "I wonder if that's Matilda or Gertrude."

Sebastian snorts. "Does it matter?"

"It would to Wes."

Sebastian moves his left arm to face palm, and then stops himself with a wince. Underneath the fabric of his polo shirt, there is a faint outline of an IV port.

"Warblers, we're gathered here for our first round of senior auditions. Dalton tradition holds that current members are auditioned for vocal part, while potential new members audition for fit and placement." Thad drowns. The group shifts, and a few boys slip out of the room. "We'll audition full range individually, later. But, as is tradition, we expect each senior member to have come prepared with an audition song. Blaine has agreed to accompany you on piano or Sam has his guitar, if you brought sheet music. Alternatively, we have the boombox if you brought a CD. We'll go alphabetically. Warbler Potter?"

Blaine played a few careful, melancholy cords on the piano. He has a rich voice, somewhere between baritone and tenor. It's sounds suited to pop songs, and yet, it conveys the deep emotions of a breakup.

_If you ask me how I'm doing  
I would say I'm dong just fine  
I would lie and and say that you're not on my mind  
But I go out and I sit down at a table set for two  
And finally I'm forced to face the truth,  
No matter what I say I'm not over you, not over you_

"Fucking Hummel." Sebastian frowns, and picks at the white plastic hospital bracelet on his wrist, and mutters the words under his breath. "You'd think he died or something instead of moving to New York." He kicks the chair.

As the song ends, it's clear that David and Thad are pleased with Blaine. "He was our lead two years ago, before he transferred to McKinley." Jon supplies the information.

"Stench of public school." The white bracelet around Sebastian's wrist gets twisted again. His words are barely audible, intended for no one else's ears. He turns slightly gray.

Thad finishes making notes. David continues flipping a ballpoint he hasn't put to paper yet. "Boxer?"

Jon uses his crutches to leaver himself off the couch. Most of the boys try not to stare at the empty leg of his pants.

Sebastian glowers darkly at the empty space. If there had been something here, the tall boy might have lit it on fire with the ferocity of his look. "How are you supposed to dance?"

Jon has mastered the art of shrugging on crutches. "The way I normally do. This is only for a couple of weeks." Sebastian's continues glaring. "Just pretend like I sprained my ankle. I'll catch up on the choreography once I'm off crutches."

David smiles encouragingly. "A repeat of your freshman year?"

"I hope I don't grow six inches again," Jon says offhandedly. "I don't want to be the jolly blue giant. Or be that awkward. I felt like a newborn colt for _months_."

"This is a singing audition." Thad reminds them. "Unless you want us to find David a kazoo to go with his navy pipping?" David is wearing a red and blue-stripped t-shirt.

"Give me two measures of intro." Jon passes a piece of sheet music over to Blaine. "And feel free to blend. Or even beatbox." He smiles warmly.

_The Dawn is breaking, light shines through  
You're barely waking, and I'm tangled up in you  
I'm open, you're closed, where I'll follow, you'll go  
I worry I won't see your face, … Light up again  
Even the best fall down sometimes  
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme  
Out of the dark that fills my mind,  
I somehow find  
You and I collide_

There are polite applause as Jon finishes. Not even the dubious Sebastian can fault his dancing skills. Thad makes more notes, and David switches from pen flipping to flipping a lazer pointer. Occasionally, he hits the button and a green dot dances on the wall. Trent stares at it like a cat.

"Cavanaugh."

Sam climbs from the floor, a grin on his face. He picks up the guitar. "I know Katy Perry is usually Blaine's thing, but I thought I might give it a try?"

Blaine winces and drops his head to the piano keyboard. Nick untangles himself from Jeff and goes over to rub the shoulders of the curly haired boy.

"Blaine wooed Kurt with Katy Perry," Jon explains. "Teenage Dream was like, _their _song or something. This should be interesting..."

The acoustic cords roll, and Sam sings _Wakin' up in Vegas _in a sweet but brassy tenor.Nick continues stroking Blaine's back, repeating encouraging words. Neither Thad nor David can comment when the song finish. Sebastian rubs his eyebrow and glares pointed at Sam's piercings. Jon fingers the pinned up leg of his dress pants.

Nick takes the floor next to sing Coldplay's _The Scientist_. It's powerful and emotive, and perfect for his voice. Jeff wipes a few tears from his eyes as Nick finishes, and whispers something as the shorter boy drapes himself back across the blond. They snuggle in.

They work their way through the rest of the company. Thad sings a rather inspiring Disney song about finding a place.

He's not entirely sure which it is; it could be from the little Mermaid for all he knows. He's seen snatches of all sorts of Disney movies in doctor's offices and floating between waking and consciousness in children's wards. But, he's not sure he's seen an entire animated feature all the way through, let along seen it enough times to recognize a song.

An Andrew Moore gets up next. He's unique in his very non-descriptness. This boy has "back up" written all over him. He hands his sheet music to Blaine, and smiles sweetly. He picks up the guitar, too, and starts fingering the cords.

_Baby, why are you calling me so late?  
It's kinda hard to talk right now.  
Honey, why are you crying? Is everything okay?  
I gotta whisper 'cause I can't be too loud._

The way Andrew Moore positions himself as he sings, his hips squarely facing the couch, it's obvious he has a thing for one of them. He keeps his back to the piano: Trent and Blaine.

_My boy's in the next room.  
Sometimes I wish he were you…  
I guess we never really moved on.  
Its really good to hear your voice sayin' my name  
Coming from the lips of an Angel  
It sounds sweet  
Coming from the lips of an angel,  
Hearin' those words, It makes me weak  
And I never wanna say goodbye  
But boy, you make it hard to be faithful  
With the lips of an angel._

The words are uncomfortable, and clearly meant for _someone _on the couch.

_It's funny that you're callin' me tonight,  
And yes, I've dreamt of you, too  
Does Trent know you're talkin' to me?  
Will it start a fight?  
No, I don't think he has a clue…_

The singer jerks his head toward Thad, and grimaces dramatically.

Jon gathers him his crutches and forcibly gets up from the couch. They make a hard staccato as he limps out of the audition room.

_My boy's in the next room.  
Sometimes I wish he were you…  
I guess we never really moved on.  
Its really good to hear your voice sayin' my name  
Coming from the lips of an Angel  
It sounds sweet  
Coming from the lips of an angel,  
Hearin' those words, It makes me weak  
And I never wanna say goodbye  
But boy, you make it hard to be faithful  
With the lips of an angel._

The show isn't easy to watch; regardless of whether its actual drama or heightened performance. The couch is too fluffy, but he leavers himself out without elbowing Sebastian in the face.

Behind them, the music is winding down.

"Fucking asshole," Jon swears. "I swear he pulls shit like that just for the drama." He moves quickly toward the elevator.

"Slow down!" He catches the other boy. "Some of us don't have a good leg."

Jon frowns. "What the hell happened? You were fine on Thursday."

He does _not _want to answer this question. He doesn't want to talk deeply about his injuries, or his sisters of his nightmares. "What the hell happened back there?"

"Andrew has no fucking clue what he's doing." Jon presses the button for the elevator furiously. "Or what any of us are doing. He likes to pretend he's an alpha gay. He likes to use Sebastian as his role model."

He stores away this piece of information about his roommate. It's good to know, although he trusts the boy not to be predatory. Then again, if Sebastian is Andrew's roommate, this may not be a good idea.

The two boys board the elevator. "He hasn't, he didn't. We didn't… He's pretending." Jon's words are a rapid staccato as he tries to make sense of his thoughts. He fingers the rubber handhold of his crutch, pulling it away from the metal surrounding it. "It was experimentation. Not a real relationship. And we're not… I'm not."

They make it to Jon and Trent's room. The door is unlocked. Jon pushes his way through, and throws himself on the bed. His crutches are left as an ungainly pile near the head. Then, the pants are gone, and Jon is sitting in his boxers, his mismatched limbs exposed. The patchy flakiness has gotten worse. Jon scratches at his foot, until bright red pin-pricks stand out against his already red skin.

There are heavy footfalls in the hallway. Thad stands in the doorway, Trent close behind him. "You can sit, Hunt."

He sinks onto Trent's bed, planting himself in the middle of an anime-style picture of a short, blond boy with a ponytail, a giant suit of armor with a goofy expression on its face (if suits of armor could have goofy expression) and a marmalade cat.

Trent studies his roommate's foot. The prolonged gaze isn't malicious, or curious or pitying. It's a matter-of-fact evaluation. "Hydrocortisone." The boy who destroys toasters slips into the bathroom.

"You okay, Jon?" The senior Warbler's words are gentle. He pertches on the edge of the bed, and gently touches Jon's left thigh (the one that was connected to a knee, calf and ankle).

Jon shrugs. "It could have been worse. He could have sung 'One is the Lonliest number' to me." He makes a gesture toward his lower body.

Trent starts crooning from the bathroom.

"_One is the lonliest number that you'll ever do.  
Two can be as bad as one.  
It's the loneliest number since the number one."_

Jon picks up a Spanish-English dictionary from the nightstand and heaves it at his roommate. "Shut up."

Trent emerges laughing. He presents Jon with a white tube, and then wanders over to the closet. "As Jeff would say, 'Shit me, you're foot is a fucking mess. Ointment then sock, mate.'" Trent's Australian accent sounds something like a cross between Shriek and the crocodile hunter.

"We're kicking Andrew out," Thad announces, ignoring Trent's shenanigans. "David and I voted. Sebastian was about to jump off the couch and tackle him, IV or not. And I don't know if noticed, but Blaine started playing half way through the song and looked like he was about to run and find his boxing gloves."

"He probably shouldn't go to Fight club." Jon observes.

He wrinkles his nose. "I thought you weren't supposed to talk about Fight club?"

"I'm not. Just making an observation." Thad frowns. "But, it does leave us without a member. And we've auditioned everyone."

"Not everyone." Trent says. He pulls out a battered silver laptop covered in stickers. They say things like '_Save the Earth. It's the only Planet with Chocolate','The Angels have the phonebox' _and '_We are too damn pretty to die.'_

A youtube video starts playing. It's an acapella group singing something familiar.

_Debbie just hit the wall; she never had it all  
One Prozac a day, husband's a CPA;  
Her dreams went out the door when she turned 24  
Only been with one man, what happened to her plan?_

He feels himself flushing. The soloists's voice. He knows it.

_She was gonna be an actress, she was gonna be a star.  
She was goona shake her ass, on the hood of White Snake's car.  
Her yellow SUV is now the enemy.  
Looks at her average life,  
And nothin' has been all right_

They hit the chorus, and he sings along with the recording of himself.

_Springsteen, Madonna, Waitin' for Nirvana,  
There was U2, and Blondie and Music still on MTV  
Her two kids in high school tell her that she's uncool  
'Cause she's still preoccupied with 19, 19, 1985._

It feels good, letting things go. He can hear Hunter sings 80's songs as counter melodies to the refrain. It makes him miss Colorado and the cadette choir and getting yelled at for saying, "ass" on stage.

When he video finishes, Thad is grinning but Jon frowns. "How come it says the soloist is Kellen Samuels when you're clearly singing."

He covers himself quickly with a lie. "They flipped our names. Kellen arranged. I soloed." He prays they don't do any more Youtube searches for him.

_A/N: First, most of the song selections here are the responsibility of the AMAZING __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**__ who has been working triple overtime as music consultant, friend, and awesome writer. She is responsible for a bunch of the bizarre, weird things that go on in this fic (Jon the sculptor, angry Trent, and I think possibly even Trent and toasters, although that might have been a collaboration way back when?) If you haven't read her stuff, pretty much everything is amazing, and you should. Right away._

_Obviously, songs selected here are not mine and lyrics are not mine. Lyrics from "Not Over You" by Gavin DeGraw, "Collide" by Howie Day, "Lips of an Angel" by Hinder (modified for the purposes of drama), "One is the Lonliest Number" by Three Dog Night and "1985" by Bowling for Soup. For the sounds of Sam and Nick, I recommend finding Luke Edgemon's cover of "Wakin' up in Vegas" and Curt Mega doing "The Scientist" from _A Night with Curt and Dom_ on Youtube._

_Trent's bedspread features the characters Edward and Alfonse Aldrich from Fullmetal Alchemist. I wish I was awesome enough to have thought of something like that. _

_The semester is winding down, and more characters have decided that it is perfectly normal to wander out of my closet and into my head WHENEVER they want. So… we'll see how things go._

_Questions, comments, concerns, prompts, suggestions, critiques, songs, and ways to convince my students to stop emailing me about their project due on Tuesday welcome. – C65 _


	28. Chapter 28

His first week at Dalton goes well. Or, as well as he can expected. It is, after all, still his life.

Sebastian, conspicuously absent on Monday, declares it "Girl Groups of the late 90's" week, which meant that they wake up to hits like The Spice Girls, _Genie in a Bottle_, Alanis Morissette, and, on Friday, _Barbie Girl_. He really, really, really wants to forget the sight of a completely naked Sebastian acting out the Aqua lyrics.

He spends a surprisingly good Friday night with Jon, Trent, a hot glue gun, dowels, tiny pink shoes he has trouble holding with his finger braces and several decapated Barbie dolls. It will hopefully teach Sebastian not to awaken him with god-awful pop before seven am. Trent and Jon spend a cheerful half hour arguing about how much trouble they'll get in if they defenestrate a Barbie. He tries to ignore the argument. The word "defenestrate" gives him nightmares, and he wakes himself up screaming more than once Saturday morning.

Classes are the usual mix of baffling and boring.

He tended to do well in anything he could learn through a book: English, government, economics, psychology, history. He and his government teacher had engaged in a pleasant half hour debate on Tuesday concerning public health care (He's in favor, the teacher is opposed). He enjoys rereading Beawulf in English, and is excited to see both _The Importance of Being Earnest _and _Rozencratz and Gildenstern are dead_ listed among the required books.

Languages are manageable as well. Sarai is polylingual, and between the visits, phone calls, and his time in Canada, he speaks French with hesitating fluency. His German is conversational. And, he's picked up a few words of Spanish, Polish, Tagalong and Japanese. He isn't good enough in any to carry on a conversation, but he can order food or swear or ask where the bathroom or hospital is and understand most of the directions. Dalton refuses to let him study any language in which he has been proved competent, and Spanish hadn't fit in his schedule, so somehow he was in a beginning ASL class. Trent sits next to him on Monday and teaches him the sign for "Asshole". It gets readily incorporated into the name sign they use for the disgraced former Warbler, Andrew.

Math, though, had never been his strong suit. He's not natural disincline toward math like some people (Nick's eyes seemed to cross whenever Trent and Jeff start arguing about limits or proofs and Billy had trouble _adding_). But, he doesn't have a natural inclination toward it, either. Math was not something he could teach himself out of books. And, that is a problem. The thing that complicates the subject further is its cumulative nature. It was hard to get a complete picture of something that built on its self when you tended to switch schools every semester (sometimes even more frequently than that, depending on his sister's whims), and even when you were in one place, you were frequently out sick. He doesn't have a good foundation. He's had multi-digit multiplication three times, but never really gotten the hang of long division. His math with fractions is horrible. He can balance an equation, but isn't sure about the difference between an isosceles, scalar and acute triangles. Dalton places him in Trig, a junior level class that should be appropriate. Except that it consists of triangles, fractions, and circles. He is sunk as soon as the teacher starts pronouncing the word he assumed to be "sin" (with a short _i_) like a road sign.

Without Math, Chemistry is baffling. He has no idea what a mole is, other than a furry animal, and why it's associated with an avocado. He has some vague notion that it somehow related to grams, and elephants and donuts. But, beyond that, he is completely, hopelessly lost.

His social life is mostly easier to navigate.

The Warblers, especially Trent, Jon, Nick and Jeff (or as the others tend to refer to them, "Niff") have more or less adopted him. They eat with him (usually lunch and dinner), always making a subtle point to help with his and Jon's trays. After they sit, Nick and Jon say a quiet grace together before they eat, holding hands with Trent. He, Jeff, and sometimes Seb remain respectfully quiet even if they don't join the prayer. One of the boys takes a turn nagging Seb about his "number" which usually earns them a bird and some sort of evasion. Jeff nags him about eating more vegetables. Actually, Jeff nags everyone about eating more vegetables and asks if they're getting enough protein. The boys argue and talk about classes and debate. And then someone carries his tray back to the wash line for him.

They drag him to _every _Warbler's practice that week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday). Auditions continue on Tuesday. He discovers that Trent is able to scat. Sebastian, in a burst of inspiration that could be extended to his morning repertoire, belts a ballad about running away with a girl called Samantha. Jeff plays guitar and Nick accompanies him on keyboard as the Aussie harmonizes with his country's unofficial national anthem. David finishes the set by covering Smokey Robinson.

He thinks they're done, until Trent turns to _him_. On Wednesday, he auditions with Flo Rida's Whistle.

Trent invites him to study. Sometimes he accepts, sometimes he declines. He likes alone time. And, he finds studying around other people can be a bit distracting. He ends up doing more socializing than actual work. But, on Thursday he lets Jon sit him down and _try _to explain the basics of trig. (SOACAHTOA is apparently a pneumonic device). Jeff and Trent both try to tackle chemistry, with little success. In exchange, he proofreads Trent's essay for English. He points out that it doesn't matter how awesome Beawulf or how awful Grendel was, calling the former a "BAMF" and the latter "an ugly asshat" was not going to win Trent points with their matronly English teacher. He sends a PDF of the Magna Carta, and they spend a good hour arguing about it. He enjoys having friends who are a bit nerdy.

The boys explain (and sometimes invite him to partake in) a few of the more ridiculous Dalton traditions that come up that first week. Like why the Warblers have "family dinner" Wedsday night. The only difference he can tell between "family dinner" and normal dinner is that on Wednesday, the boys sit at a long, head table at the front of the dining hall. Other nights, it's occupied by the soccer, cross-country, swim and debate teams, a group described as "that club we don't talk about", and on Sunday, the teachers. The difference between family dinner and normal dinner appears to be that David usually bring something he's stress baked and stashed away for dessert and a lot more people stick their forks into his food. He's not sure how he feels about it.

He starts to settle in. He starts to make what might be called friends, if he can let himself have them. Dalton feels almost safe.

_A/N: I apologize for the length of time it's taken for me to reply to people. It's been a week of depression, stress, internet troubles and overwhelming muse activity in other areas (which is good news and bad?). So, thank you for bearing with me. … I sort of felt like we needed a summary, snap shot chapter. Partially to move things along (because lets be honest, we're at chapter 28 and have barely gotten through the first three days) and partially because, I dunno, we just did. ._

_Thanks you everyone who read/reviewed. Shout outs to __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**_, _**NiffAreForever**__, __**PenMagic**__, __**Youdontknowme06**__, and __**B00kw0rm92.**_

_Questions, comments, concerns, critiques, or things I should do to occupy my sort-of free time now that I'm done teacher all welcome. –C65_


	29. Chapter 29

By his third week at Dalton, he's determined to do everything in his power to remain at the school until he graduates. He feels safer here than anywhere he's been in almost a year. And, the safety here came faster and more easily than it ever did in Colorado. No one has called him a freak, yet, or suggested they cut him to see how long he'll bleed. He feels like he can stop running and let down his guard some. Like he can rest from the battle for a bit. He doesn't know if he can trust the others completely; Sarai and Lara took up Mad-Eye Moody's motto with gusto, and he has his own paranoia. But, this is still better than being on the run.

Tuesday evening, after Warbler practice but before curfew, he and Jon wait by the pool. It's a celebration. Today was the first day he managed to walk through the halls of the school with only his light athletic bracing and no crutches or cane. His bulky, rigid AFO is back in his trunk. His fingers still glitter with their rings, but even those are precautionary rather than a response to an injury.

Jon is still on crutches, and sulking a bit. He'd had a reaction to the antifungal cream the doctor had prescribed for his foot. It's only in the last day or so that the clear yellow ooze has let up, and the sole has gone from blood red to a simple blush. It's still too swollen for him to even think about wearing his prosthetic, something Jeff had the gall to point out during practice that afternoon when Sebastian made a snide comment about Jon's dancing. Jon stares longingly at the pool. He has been banned until his foot heals. "I didn't know you were a diver."

He shrugs. "I started when I was about eight. It was a decent no-contact sport that I could actually do."

"What happens when you belly flop?" Jon settles into a deck chair, trying to contain something between a grimace and a smile.

He knows his grin is cocky. "I don't."

"Bullshit." Jon calls. "Even Loche hits wrong sometimes."

His limp is almost invisible and his hesitating barely noticeable as he lowers himself to dip his legs in the cool water of the pool. "I practice somewhere I'm not likely to get hurt before I ever get near the water. And, I'm careful. I know what risks I'm taking."

"I don't exactly know how you can say that." Beatz shifts in his chair to change the way weight is distributed on his injured foot. "I mean, no one knows the future." His voice catches a little.

He doesn't know exactly what's wrong, but he knows Jon well enough to know that it's something beyond dare-devilry on the diving board. "Walk to talk about it?"

Jon shrugs. "Do you ever… Do you think… What if something happens?"

"I'm a hemophiliac with a congenital heart defect and a collagen disorder." He lifts his shirt so Jon can get a good view of his scars. There's the one over his heart, on his right side, the puckered pouch of a feeding tube, and the lines from his liver, appendix and kidneys. "I think I'm at about ten times my expected life span, now." He tries not to think about the last person who got him here. The people who have died to keep him alive. Only, he'd actually known Hunter. His laugh is mirthless. "It's not so much worrying. It's knowing."

Jon shakes his head. He doesn't look shocked. Trent would have been shocked and appalled to hear him say these things. Jeff would worry. Sebastian would probably tell him that if he'd died when he was a baby, it would put the people watching his dancing out of their misery. But, he can tell that Jon sort of understands. "How do you do it? How do you live that way?"

"Do you want the bullshit I tell everyone or the truth?" He walks slowly back to his deck chair and sits on the edge so that only a few inches and an arm rest separate him and the other boy. He could reach out and touch Jon, if he wanted to.

Jon is quiet for a moment. "Both," he decides.

"So, most people just want to hear how lucky I am to be alive. They need me to be inspiration porn or something. The little sick orphan who triumphed over the odds."

"I thought your parents were alive." Jon interrupts. "There was a newspaper article that says your parents are alive."

He gives a half shrug and the lie rolls off his tongue. "Business orphan, than. Do you really think my dad could take time off work with his multinational conglomerate every time I was in the hospital? And my mom was too busy being a Vice President's wife…"

Anger flashes in Jon's eyes, but he doesn't insult Hunter's parents. "And the truth?"

He considers a moment how to phrase it, chewing his lips. "I just, survive. I don't have any other option, I just do it."

Jon nods. "I'm scared I can't keep it up," he admits quietly.

He waits, knowing there's more. He's not going to push, he's going to let the dam break on its own. The words start tickling out in little rivulets.

"I had cancer when I was a kid." Jon motions toward his leg. "Ewing's scaroma. Bone cancer."

Even if he hadn't met Jon when they were children, he would have known that. The kind of amputation, a rotation, isn't something that happens with trauma. If your leg needs to be amputated because of an accident or gangrene, you lose the whole thing, not just your thigh.

"Chemotherapy. Radiation therapy. Amputation. And it worked. I was … clear." It's Jon's turn to fiddle with the towel. "My parents wouldn't have let me come here otherwise…"

He thinks how nice it must be to have family that cares about you, but doesn't say anything. Jon doesn't need to hear his problems right now.

"It hurts, though, you know… It hurts like hell. Deep in your bones." Jon rubs his right thigh. He frowns in concern. "Well, I hurt again."

"Fuck." Hunter summarizes the situation succinctly. "What are you going to do?"

Jon shrugs. "Get the doctors to check for it. … Keep telling myslf that its probably nothing. Try to remember that my bones hurt when I was growing." Jon's laugh is almost guileless.

"Yeah, what's with all the puberty jokes?" He takes the opportunity to distract his friend.

A morose little shrug. "No prosthetic is designed to grow eight inches with its user. And, umm… that happened freshman year." Jon hides his face in the towel. "I also kind of sounded like Kermit for the first three or four months I was here. Until my voice settled."

He laughs. "But, most of those guys have graduated?"

Jon shakes his head. "We've got seventh and eight graders, too, if you haven't noticed. So, current sophomores were in seventh grade during that unfortunate year. And, Trent can't let it go. I completely regret agreeing to play Long Jon Silver in the school production of _Treasure Island._"

"Trent can be an ass." He agrees. "But, I bet you were an awesome pirate. Stump and everything. … Although I don't know how you found pants to fit."

Jon laughs, a real laugh. "A lot of dress code violations and high water pants. My mom refused to get me new ones more than once a month. The rule still stands. I have to wear them through first."

"They don't let you wear shorts?" He hasn't seen anyone in shorts other than athletes.

Jon shakes his head. "Not without our uniforms. They're sort of sadists that way. And we have to wear out jackets even if it's 90 with 90% humidity."

He winces. He hates humidity. "So, how did you?"

Jon shrugs. "Just did." He looks around the pool. "The teams out, if you want to dive."

He grins, and throws his towel across the chair, and pulls on a pair of goggles. He does a few preliminary stretches, and shakes his limbs. They are, as always, a little looser than he'd like. He slips out of his ring splits and walks slowly and carefully to the diving board. Running on a pool deck was never one of his problems.

He sees Jon's jealous face as he takes a preliminary dive off the low board. He's not in great shape, but he's okay. He could be straighter, more streamlined.

Eventually, he moves up to the high dive. He feels surprisingly free as he flips.

_A/N: Again, sorry for the delay. GAH. I feel like I say this every week. Life has been crazy. Possibly even crazier than when I decided to write a term paper in 72 hours on a topic I'd never worked with before and read 42 reserach papers for it. Also, my internet has gone kaputz. So, I promise, I will respond to you. I'm not avoiding because I don't want to, I'm avoiding because I can barely get on to check my email and find pictures of Dr. Who to use to explain science. ... But, I'm also looking forward to more stability and regular updates soon (two more hurdles and then through the worst for a while)._

_Thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, followed, or favorite. Shout-outs to __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**_**, **_**PenMagic**_**, **_**NiffAreForever**__, __**YouDontKnowMe06**__, and __**B00kw0rm92**_.

_Questions, Comments, Concerns, Critiques, Suggestions, prompts or Magical predictions of where I will end up for the next six years all welcome. –C65 _


	30. Chapter 30

_**WARNING: This chapter deals with self-harm. **_

Later that week, he understands what Trent meant about the walls being thin. He can't sleep. He's in pain, and reeling from failing a chemistry quiz. He still doesn't understand his teacher's obsession with furry rodents, and they're moving on to more challenging things, like bonds. (For the first time in his life, Connery, Brosnen, and Craig are NOT the answer.) He's leery about taking chemicals to sleep, afraid that they'll trap him back in the nightmares he's invariably having. It's getting painfully close to November, and November is a month he'd rather spend losing himself. So, he pads up and down the halls, bare foot and shirtless, waiting for his mind to calm enough for sleep.

The third annex sits at the end of the main building at Dalton, perpendicular to the long transom. The corridors are wide; the building was constructed in the days of hoop skirts and courting ladies. The bathroom for the annexes, with their communal showers, urinals and toilets sit just past the stairs, facing the annex corridors, leaving a small open area at the end of the main hall.

He paces in the open space. Every so often, he glances out the window to see the grounds below. Even though it was dark, he knew that the window looks out on a sports field and a copse of trees with a creek. Nick claims that past the creek is an old graveyard from when Dalton was first established in the mid 1880's. The brunette has promised to take him there and tell him the history of the school, but only when he's healthy enough for the walk. Well, as long as snow hasn't started falling. Nick had rubbed his hip and frowned unconsciously when snow came up. He wants to ask, but he won't.

The light from the bathroom casts a warm glow into the hallway, illuminating a wide circle. The night is otherwise quiet and dark. Or, mostly quiet. His footsteps are not entirely silent. It's a skill he works on when ever he's not in AFOs or on crutches, both of which make his footfalls heavy. In sneakers, he can almost manage. He needs to learn the way to place his feet, though. Beyond his soft footfalls, the night is filled with the sounds of sleeping boys. Trent snuffles in his sleep, and Thad mutters. Someone on the floor – he hasn't figured out whom, but he suspects Roberto –snores like a small bulldozer.

There's an unusual sound, though, too. Someone is crying. They're trying to hide it, muffling the sound. But, he is good at listening for people's tears.

He pads into the bathroom, where he's pretty sure the crying person is. He finds Jeff, sitting under the sinks and sniffling. The blond is wearing Captain America boxer briefs and a dirty white undershirt. This hair sticks up at a few odd angles. He looks young and vulnerable. A silver square glints in one of Jeff's hands, a fat sharpie sticks out of the other.

He doesn't say anything, just sinks down beside Jeff. The floor and wall are cold through his pajama pants and t-shirt. He waits to see if he gets a reaction. The blond ignores him; his eyes are closed, and his shoulders heave. He doesn't know if he should reach out and touch Jeff, or go find someone.

Jeff flicks the silver box, and a tiny tongue of flame emerges. That decides it for him. He's not leaving Jeff alone. Even if they didn't have a tentative friendship, even if he didn't know it was against an unspoken Dalton code, the idea terrifies him.

"Jeff?" He asks, tentatively. "What's wrong? Is it okay to touch you?"

The sharpie clatters to the light gray tiles and suddenly his hand is in a death grip.

"She's coming." The blond gasps, his accent more pronounced in response pain and anger and fear. "She's coming."

He squeezes Jeff's hand, hoping that his fingers stay in place. "Who?"

Jeff sniffles. "My mom." The lighter flickers in his hand.

"Isn't that good?"

Jeff shrugs and brings the lighter to his lips. He blows out the flame, but doesn't close small metal box. Propane builds up in the air: so much that he can smell it.

Jeff's laugh is bitter. "Yeah, my mom is just the person I want here. Now. When I'm failing so badly at everything and she wants to … change me."

The blond's rationality slips. The words flow out of his mouth like a mantra.

"I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. Nobody wants me. Nobody wants a fuck up." The Aussie shakes.

He's not sure what to say. It's not true. He knows it's not true. He knows _Jeff_ knows it's not true. But, Jeff has somehow forgotten it. He finally finds a word. "Why?"

Jeff slumps and shrugs. He swipes at his tears with wrist, smearing snot across his face. "'Cause I have to protect them."

"Who?" He lefts Jeff go as the blond starts to squirm. "Who do you have to protect?"

Jeff shrugs. "Them. Someone has to get punished. It can't be them. It has to be me."

"Why?" He asks, again. He doesn't understand.

When Jeff responds, the words come through him. It's not the normal, rational blond who is in control. The response is reminiscent of the way demonic possession is portrayed sometimes in books, when the parasite speaks through their host. "Because. I have to protect them." The blond starts crying again.

The creature that has Jeff in its thrall is clearly not rational. He tries another tactic. "How are you protecting them by hurting yourself?"

The blond shrugs again, the movement jerky, and grips the lighter tightly. "I'm floating." Rational Jeff is returning, sort of. Or at least, he's calming even thought the tears keep flowing. "I'm not grounded any more. … And I need to feel grounded. … I need to come down. And, violent reactions… pain… it brings me back." Jeff starts shaking again, trying to fight the emotions that are threatening to take control.

He reaches out to pluck the lighter from Jeff's fingers. The fight has gone from the blond, and the Aussie offers no resistance. He notices a raw, red patch on Jeff's forearm where a blister is already starting to rise.

"Com'mon." He pulls the blonde to his feet, and turns on the cold tap.

Jeff yawns in protest. "I'm tired." His eyes fill with tears, again.

He takes a firm hold of Jeff's wrist, and drags the arm under the flow of the water. "This will help." He's not sure if he means the burn or the fatigue. He supposes that it's a good answer for either.

Jeff's shaking gets more violent. The snot runs into Jeff's open mouth.

He decides that the blond cannot stay up much longer. He pulls several sheets brown towel from the dispenser on the wall, and runs them under another cold tap. He uses one to clean Jeff's face, and wraps another around the boy's arm.

"Don't tell Nicky," Jeff begs, turning red. "I'm just gonna go and sleep. But, don't wake up Nicky. And don't tell him."

"I'm pretty sure he's going to notice." He doesn't bother trying to walk quietly, just escorts Jeff down the hall to the room with the Southern Cross. "Good Night, Jeff."

Jeff sniffles. "Good night, Hunt."


	31. Chapter 31

**Warning: This chapter deals with self-harm and rape. The rape scenes are again denoted by line breaks. If you want a summary of the chapter, I'm happy to send you one by PM.**

**As a reminder, some of the perceptions below, while my words, do not reflect my personal beliefs.**

"Where's Jeff?" He demanded, almost before he sat at the lunch table.

Jon shrugged, sliding onto the bench and leaning his crutches beside him. "I haven't seen him."

Trent set down Jon's tray, then his own. "I haven't seen him this morning, but it was block, so that isn't unusual. What classes does the koala have, Nick?"

"He had a dissection in AP bio," the brunette reports. "A shark, I think."

Sebastian plunks down his tray. "The Aussie got eaten by a shark? Poetic justice."

Nick flips Seb the bird. "Jeff was cutting up the Shark."

"Number?" Trent demands, as Seb picks up his fork.

Sebastian frowns. "8675309. Call it for a good time."

"No, seriously." Jon says, leaning over and gently pulling Sebastian's tray away.

The tall boy sighs, and produces a black case from his backpack. He flicks open a bottle and sticks a blue plastic strip – which can be found littering the dorm room, hallways, bathroom, locker rooms, work out rooms, classrooms, practice room, music room, common room, BMW, and just about anywhere else Sebastian has been in the last several weeks. He uses a small plastic stick to prick his finger, and milks out a large ruby drop of blood.

He can't watch this part. He can deal with the injections, the highs, the lows, the snark and the anger and the random smell of insulin. He's learning how to wake up Sebastian when one of the god-awful alarms goes off in the middle of the night, and how to go back to sleep after the wail of Fir Elise breaks his sleep. In exchange, Seb has stopped shuddering at the random IV lines and doesn't mock him for using an electric razor. But, he doesn't understand how Sebastian is able to make himself bleed. Logically, he knows that his roommate is able to clot, that bleeding isn't a concern for Sebastian. Emotionally, he still can't handle it.

He coughs awkward. "I need something to drink. Anyone need some coffee?"

"Gim'me a soda?" Sebastian's words are only slightly garbled around the pinky in his mouth.

Trent glances over, and smacks Seb lightly on the arm. "You're 150. You don't need one."

"Don' need it. Wan' it." Sebastian retorts.

Thad arrive. "What's up?"

"Jeff's missing." Sebastian accepts his cup, and wipes his now bloodless pinky on a napkin. "Could he have stayed late during the shark dissection?"

Thad shakes his head. "We finished the shark during the period. And Leung had a meeting. He kicked all of us out at the end of the period. Jeff disappeared afterward. He said he was going to go for a run."

Nick goes pale. "Did he go to the locker room or up to our room?"

Thad shrugs again. "Probably your room, since he headed in the direction of the dorms."

"His mom called last night. She's coming to parent's night." Nick's words had a chilling effect on the rest of the group.

"Fuck." Jon shoves his mostly full tray at Trent. "Thad, can you and Nick go check the dorm? Bribe Scott if you have to. Hunter and I can take the gym. Seb and David are the fastest runners, they can take the trail by the lake. Trent, you get Blaine and go to the music room?"

The still-full trays get cleared to the window, and the six set off to search for Jeff.

"Why are we going to the gym?" He demands, as they leave the cafeteria.

Jon shrugs. "Jeff spent a lot of time in locker rooms when he was growing up. I think he finds the smell or something comforting."

"I'm not sure it works that way." He shudders, thinking of the hospitals he's been around. He's not terrified anymore, but it's not a place he'd run for comfort. "Then again, I don't understand Jeff's bathroom thing."

"Bathroom thing?" Jon looks at him cautious. "Mind getting the door?"

He swings it open. "I found Jeff in the bathroom last night?"

"Lighter or blade?" The beat boxer studies him.

"Zippo."

"Shit. And that wasn't something you could mention earlier. To, I dunno, someone like an RA?" Jon limps into the locker room.

He takes a deep breath of fresh air, and follows. It smells like old gym socks. "It didn't seem like something to mention in front of everyone. Its his business who, and when, he wants to tell."

Jon just turns and stares at him. "He's hurting himself. I'm pretty sure that falls into the category of _tell someone _along with homicide, suicide, and child abuse." There's a pause. "And, most of us know. He and Thad lived together in eight grade, and then he was with Blaine in ninth, and Trent last year. And he's one of ours. … We know."

"Well, I didn't know that you knew. And, I wasn't going to betray something like that to everyone. People look at you different when they found out shit like that…" He feels emotions he doesn't want come up.

Jon sighs, and starts a methodical search of the empty locker room. "Not here."

He goes to check the showers. One is dripping, but there's no blond anywhere. "Well, clearly Dalton Fucking Academy is heaven, then."

The beatboxer's laugh echos off the walls. "More like the island of misfit toys. We end up here 'cause no one wants us anywhere else. They try to make us normal, so no one knows."

"And telling about cutting is supposed to help with that? What about solidarity?" The stalls look empty, too.

Jon circles back. "This is about solidarity. And, we can't help if we don't know what the problems and triggers are."

"Maybe Jeff doesn't want your help. Maybe he doesn't need your fucking help." He feels his temper rising.

"He hurts himself because he thinks no one loves him." Jon retorts, the words a harsh staccato against the ceramic tiles.

"You've got a fucking answer for everything, don't you?" It's his turn to laugh. "You've got no fucking clue. Have you ever asked Jeff why he burns himself?"

Jon turns to face him, straight and strong on his crutches. If they were going to fight, they'd be pretty evenly matched for weight and height. He'd have the advantage of balance, Jon would have resilience. He wonders for a moment who would win.

"But, just because you have scars doesn't mean you need any more. And it doesn't mean you should let someone else make more." Jon's voice is tight and dangerous, like a coiled spring.

He counts down from ten in his head. He's tired. He's almost sure there's a storm coming in, and his knee is starting to ache. If he weren't here, on this wild goose chase, he'd be up in his room getting painkillers and a brace. "You're being a bastard. I didn't encourage him. I stopped him. I cleaned it up. I just didn't tell anyone."

"Same difference," Jon counters.

He counts from twenty this time.

"No, it's not. There's nothing I could do to make it go away. He was already guilty for what he'd done, and ashamed of himself, he didn't need me shaming or pitying him. He can do that on his own." His words are harsh, but true. "He needed a friend to patch him up and let him keep his secret. I check, it wasn't life threatening." He coughs. "Well, at least not for the damn Aussie."

* * *

Jon glares. "Who made you judge and jury?"

"That's exactly my point," He sighs. "I'm not. If he wants to tell you about his cutting, or come out, or talk about the woman who raped him –"

His voice breaks, and tears he didn't know he still had prink at his eyes. He's never said the word before. Rape.

It's something that happens to someone else, never to you.  
It happens to girls in alleys and at parties. Drunk girls who are dressed like sluts. Drunk girls who act like sluts.  
It happens to gay men in Bathhouses. Men who are asking for it. Who take drugs and share disease.  
It happens to whores. People who make their living selling their bodies. People who are asking for it.

It doesn't happen to boys. Straight boys don't get raped.

And then the tears come. Hot and fast and messy. There's snot dribbling down his face, and into his mouth, and he's turning red.

Jon comes over, and sinks down beside him. But, he doesn't touch him. "Who raped you, Hunter?"

He doesn't respond to the name. Because no one has ever hurt Hunter, or degraded him that way. At least, not while he was alive. Hunter lived like a man. He died like a man. And, what happened after his death? Someone – his roommate, his brother, Kellen – someone should have stopped him. And, someone failed.

"Who raped you, Charlie?"

The childhood name catches him off guard. But, it feels right. The little boy inside him speaks for the first time.

"Mary Beth."

Oh God. He can't believe he said that.

_A/N: I had a big note planned here, but I'm not sure I can write it now. Dear Reader, thank you for sticking it out to here. I love you. You're beautiful, and special, and not alone._


	32. Chapter 32

**WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS YET MORE SEXUAL ASSUALT. IT GETS EVEN MORE GRAPHIC. SCENE IS AGAIN DENOTED BY LINE BREAKS, AND I'M HAPPY TO GIVE SUMMARIES VIA PM WHICH LEAVE OUT ANY REFERENCES…**

A heavy, icy, numb silence settles over the locker room and the two boys like an overnight blanket of snow. Jon sits beside him, staring ahead impassively.

His limbs are like lead, and his mind is fighting through a fog. Old protection mechanisms, long forgotten but left in good condition, are falling into place.

He's sealing himself off from other people. His body is shutting down to sleep, and let his mind rest and forget about whatever he's done or said. A dose of some painkiller or another wouldn't be out of place. His chest feel hollow. His heart has gone. He doesn't know where it is.

* * *

The cold, hard metal drives into his back, and inspite of everything, the world clouds in front of him. When he opens his eyes, he's in the nurse's office of a small, rural school in West Virgina. He's still small. He grew early, but before he grew, he was a scrawny, scrappy child. The kind of kid people called a fighter in hushed tones. Every wall in the place is covered in posters about things like washing your hands and staying home when you have the chicken pox. Because parents who send their children to school with red chicken pox scabs visit the school nurse's office and see the posters. The only wall that doesn't have a poster on it sits at the foot of the dark blue vinyl cot. It's like the se's cot in a thousand schools: cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and still scented from its last round of bleach.

He feels himself pulled by the legs. His knees protest, but it's his shallow hips that lodge the greatest complaint. It's more dream than memory as he vaguely remembers being tiny and spending months in bed with his legs held in a cast to force his hips into the sockets. Somehow, the cast didn't work, though. The pain is like a memory, though. It's not real, it's only at the edge of his consciousness.

A round face surrounded by a halo of whispy hair of no particular color blocks out the light. He can't make out the features, but he knows who it is.

Her face disappears, and he lays back against the bed. She plays with him. He can feel her touching him. He squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to name the presidents.

Washington.

Adams.

Jefferson.

He opens his eyes, and he's back in the locker room. He's back in his body. No one is touching him. No one is touching him. No one is touching Caleb.

He tries to bring back the comfort of a new identity. No one can touch him if he's not Caleb Pelletier, any more. No one can know that he's marked (well, any more than he's already marked). No one has to know that he's broken, deep deep down. Not just his body but his soul.

But, he can't stop the words that echo in his head. The words echo in his head, the way they echo against the hard walls. _She raped me. She raped me. _"S-S-she Raped. Caleb. She. Raped. Me."

His heart is suddenly back in his chest, and he's hyper aware of everything. His hands feel too big, too full of blood. His wrists are so tiny, so thin. The pressure against his palms is there. Otherwise, he would just think his hands are pressing into the rough epoxied concrete of the locker room without the weight of his arms or his shoulders. That the connection has just gone.

He can't believe what he's said, but its like a dam has broken. He tries to contain the next bit as it comes trickling out. He whispers the words. "Maribeth. It was Maribeth."

It's like he's alone. Jon does not respond. Jon just sits there, and waits for the tide to wash everything out.

He sinks back to the floor, feeling the cold, hard roughness against himself. It prickles through his thin shirt, and drives into his spine. But, in a strange way, it feels good. It feels like this is the only place where the world will stop spinning, just for a moment. It feels like this is the only place that the mad carnival ride that is life will let him pause for a bit. This is the only safe harbor in a storm.

So, he lies there and he breathes and he hopes that things don't start up again.

* * *

Jon's voice brings him back to reality. It's higher pitched than usual, as though Jon has regressed, and there's a tremor to it. "C-c-can we go upstairs? To the dorms? Because the seventh grade PE class is about to get in here, and unless you want to get trampled by a bunch of pre-pubescent who haven't met deodorant yet…"

Somehow the rambling brings him back to reality and gives him enough grounding that he can slowly get to his feet, and offer his hand to Jon. The two of them limp together toward the door.

He gets there first, and opens it for Jon. He's pretty sure that Jon can manage something like a door on crutches (he's used them enough that he can), but just because you can manage something doesn't mean you should.

The door opens into him, and a seventh grader barrels into him. (This is one who has clearly broken into the stock of growth hormones that his sisters sent him. He swears the kid is as tall as Jon and as hairy as Thad. And Thad's people are Mediterranean and hirsute.)

He falls over, and as though it's sympathetic to previous plights and nightmares, he feels his hip give way. It's not he fizzing pain of a bleed, but his hip is fully dislocated. It's blindingly white. And then everything goes back.

_A/N: I apologize for the short chapter, but … my computer crashed with 500 words last night and I'm not sure I have any more in me. Well, it's also 2 am and I clearly need to plan ahead. But, I promise, Jeff has been found, and he's being taken care of. And, Hunter will be taken care of…_


	33. Chapter 33

The world is spinning, spinning out of control. His head is filled with straw. His ears are filled with straw. His mouth is filled with straw: dry and nauseating and awful.

The world is spinning, spinning out of control. Eyes stare around him, eyes that are probing him. Eyes he cannot meet. There are shafts of broken sunlight, and a broken swing creaking under a fading star.

The world is spinning. He is trapped in a twilight kingdom. There is a voice in a voice filling the twilight kingdom. "… up to the third annex. Three-twenty four. If they're not there, three fifteen. Tell them we need factor VIII and one of Hunt's suckers and bring them here. You two, go to the nurse, and have someone come here."

The voice booms. The world will end not with a boom but with a whimper.

He whimpers and feels the ground underneath his back. He doesn't open his eyes, yet.

"Shh. You're okay, Charlie." The voice is gentle and soft.

"Frog," he croaks.

He can feel a hand hovering over his shoulder, and then it moving away. "We're gonna help you, Frog. We're gonna take care of you."

He knows the voice is going to take care of him. They didn't touch him. They respect his space. People who care about him respect his space.

He doesn't know where he is. There is something hard under his back, and he hurts. It smells vaguely of gym socks and sweat and too much cologne. Its the smell of pubescent boys. He takes a deep breath to calm himself and almost gags. He takes a breath through his mouth, and blinks his eyes open. Thank god he's wearing his contacts, because he recoganizes the boy's locker room and the circle of pale faces staring at him.

He's sixteen. Seventeen. Somewhere in his teens. His head is too full of pain to remember what his falsified state issued ID says. Hell, his head is too full of pain to remember what his birthday – real or the one that belongs to his identity.

"Frog, you hit your hip." He recognizes Jon's voice.

"I know." How can he not know. The edge of his world is black bright with pain. His mind threatens to slip away again.

The circle of faces moves out of the way, leaving Jon to turn pale. "Will you be okay if I go and make a couple more calls? Jai and Ted will stay with you." He looks pointedly at a well-groomed pair. "But they promise not to touch you."

He nods. "Call 911. I probably need an ambulance."

Jon gets up, a surprisingly graceful process with his crutches, and wanders out of his line of sight.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

He closes his eyes for a long moment, then opens them again. He struggles to think. "Hey, kid. Jed?" The two boys jump. "Get a sucker out of the left water bottle pocket of my bag, and don't you dare take them." He thinks for a minute, his brain moving slowly with the pain. "And a cold pack or a bag of ice if you have one."

He gets the sucker in his mouth, wincing at the artificial berry taste. The Actiq suckers taste blue. He uses his tongue to swab it against his cheek and his tongue and then the other one. He knows the drug hasn't started working completely, but it's still sweet relief. He expertly flips the lolly from one to cheek to the other, and feels his head clearing as the pain loses its edge.

He takes a mental evaluation while studying the kids. None of them have his suckers. Good. Diagnosis: posterior dislocation. He's going to end up back in traction. Back in the wheelchair until his hip works again. Fuck. He wants to kill whichever one of the kids opened the door into him.

Jon comes back into his line of sight, talking quietly to someone on the other end. "Can you feel this?"

Suddenly, his shoe is off. "Id's cold." His words are thick around the lolly. There's a pressure on his big toe. He scowls. "Fuck off."

Jon says something affirmative into the phone. And then covers the speaker again. He points to two of the younger boys. "You and you, go wait outside and meet the ambulance." He selects another pair. "You guys get Mr. Young from the office. Tell him Jon Boxer sent you, and that Jeff Stirling needs him. I don't care if he has a meeting or whatever. Tell him it's an emergency." Jon selects a final pair, indicating them with his crutches. "Go see if Stirling is back, and have him'n'Nick come down here. Sebastian, too. And Trent. If they're not there, come right back here." Then, he goes back to his phone call.

He closes his eyes, letting the world and the pain and the darkness spin him gently. It's not disorienting, just the feeling of the earth moving 1100 or so mile per hour.

Jon smacks his arm, gently. "Wake up. You have to stay with me, Hun-Char-Frog. You have to stay with me Frog."

"I'm naw going inta shoc'" He protests. "Jus' hurt. An' tired. Jes's."

The younger boys scurry back with the ice, and rest it against the joint. He grunts thanks, and waves them off.

There's a pause, and then the sound of Jon handing the phone off to someone else. "Tell me about the French American War," Jon orders.

He shifts the sucker underneath his tongue where he can't taste the blue anymore. He opens his eyes. They weigh a hundred pounds. His arms weigh a hundred pounds. His wrists feel like they're turned the wrong way, like his body is broken so something. He slurs badly when he speaks. "Frensh'n'Ind'in. Or sseven yearss war. Or Anglo-Frensh Rivil'ry."

Jon laughs nervously. "The fuck?"

"Mer'cans call it Frensh'n'Ind'in. 'Cause it go' fough' againsst the Frensh'n the Ind'ins." He managed to slur the words out. His tongue was getting cottony and his head was getting heavy. "Fuck, Bosser, go read a book an' leave me 'lone."

He gives Jon the best "Are you stupid" look he can manage with a sucker sticking out of his mouth like a toddler. "I don't tink, even wif thiss, I can siddup," he says thickly through the drug and the stick. "Gim'me a blank't an' let me ssleep. I jus' wanna ssleep."

He closes his eyes, and tries to make himself comfortable on his back, the position he hates most in the world.

_A/N For the record, Wikipedia says Actiq is berry flavored, so I'm assuming that means that they're artificial berry. I have not tasted them. Morphine and I don't get along, but that's another story. So, if I'm wrong about it tasting blue (and if you don't know what I mean, think about an electric blue slushie or blue Gatorade). _

_Hunter's speak patterns around the sucker are intentional and not typos. _

_Thank you to everyone who has read! Shout outs to __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**__, __**PenMagic, **__**PhoenixInAshes**__, __**NiffAreForever**__, __**Admirer the Anon**__, __**YouDontKnowMe06**__, and __**B00kw0rm92.**_

_More to come. Question, comments, concerns, critiques, suggestions, or prompts all welcome. –C65._


	34. Chapter 34

_Just as a warning, the narrator here is pretty much unreliable. Blame the fantastic opioid candy in the last chapter._

Between pain, the way he's emotionally disconnected, and the exhaustion he's suddenly feeling, he lets himself float while Jon does the freaking out. He doesn't realize it until later, but he's trusting Jon in a way he hasn't trusted anyone since he was about nine years old. Jon answers most of the questions the paramedics ask, as they perform basic vitals.

He's a seventeen-year-old male with an apparent acquired posterior hip dislocation. It happened because "some smelly giant asshat with bacne and a pube stash" threw a door into his hip." He's not sure he's ever heard Jon swear that much before. The "smelly giant asshat" in question hid his face.

He giggled to himself at the thought of a smelly giant-ass hat. When he was on painkillers, he sometimes had a habit of shifting the hyphens in phrases involving "ass". Immature, but it kept him happy.

He has hemophilia and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Oh, and just so they know, his heart is on the right side of his body. Well, not just his heart, but everything is flipped. … No, Trent, he's not a magical mirror twin, and there isn't another one of him.

Trent frowns, and Sebastian comments about how unfortunate it is that he doesn't have a gay twin. You know, a total mirror.

He is? on regular prophylaxis, and the magical Tylenol with codeine, and the suckers that make him loopy and constipated, Activia? Oh, Actiq. and? a multivitamin, and … yes. He's on an antidepressant. Oh, and he occasionally takes sleeping pills. He's not addicted, but sometimes, they help.

His blood type is A-. He's had a few transfusions before. They've saved his life.

This is his – tenth – Oh dear god, tenth, hip dislocation. He just moved, though and he doesn't? doesn't have an orthopedic surgeon yet.

They get him onto the stretched with a minimum of jostling. He gives them credit for helping him stay immobilized. It isn't as painful as he remembers, but that might be from the Actiq.

_He is a puppet on a shelf. The marionette strings connect to him. The marionette strings hold onto The Frog. They hold him in place and they keep him from moving, from jumping away, from hiding under a lily pad._

_Jon, little and two matched legged with his short-short hair and his permanent IV port visible under his hospital gown, sits on the lap of a semi-familiar man. He's a slim Asian guy, with slick black hair and crisp, conservative clothing. He's sure he's seen the man before, but he's not sure where. _

_A troupe of five little boys sit at the older guy's feet. A blond in a mini black track suit carries a soccer ball under one arm, and drags his best friend by the hand. The short brunette chatters at the blond, gesturing with his free hand. A couple of Lego mini figures poke out of the bib pocket of his Oshkosh. A little boy in a bow tie and sweater skips along, humming _Miss You_ to himself. Behind him, a chubby baby – at least a year, if not two, younger than the others, trails behind the others clutching a massive stuffed Brave Little Toaster to his chest. The last child wears a parochial school uniform: navy blue trousers, a white shirt and a red Stuart tartan tie. He's tall but almost skeletal: the boy's cheeks are hollow and his eyes protrude._

"_Wes, Wes!" The boy in the bowtie – Blaine – tries to get the young man's attention._

_Wes leans down and scoops up the baby, Trent. "Yes, B?"_

"_Everything is messed up!" Blaine sounds emphatic. "Hunter is hurt and Jon is sick and Trent is scared and Scotty is being a big meanie … well, Scotty and Amberlyn are being meanies and Sebastian and Jeff are hurting themselves." He thinks for a minute. "And Kurtie went to New York and he isn't talking to me!"_

_Wes handles the deluge of information quite well. "Do you want to talk about Kurt now, with everybody, or when you call me on Tuesday?"_

_B thinks about it for a minute. "Tuesday," he decides._

"_I thought so," Wes says. He squeezes Trent close. "Do you want to tell me about what happened with Scotty?"_

_Trent buries his face in the stuffed Disney character. "Yes. No. Umm… later?" The little boy still can't pronounce l's, and his voice is muffled by the stuffed appliance. "Like with Bwaine?" _

"_Or course, Trenty. Whenever you want. … Who are you worried about right now?" The older boy shifts the children on his lap, and Jonny winces, but doesn't say anything about the movement. _

_Trent's eyes flick around the room. They rest on Jeff, Seb, Jon and up to the shelf and the Frog puppet. "Jonny and Jeffy and Sebby and Hunt." He chants._

_Wes nods, and carefully exchanges Jon and Trent for Jeff and Nicky. The blond passes his soccer ball of to Sebby. "Hold onto this for me, and we'll play later?"_

_The smile of Seb's face transforms him from the survivor of some awful famine to something that might almost be child-like. He holds the soccer ball close. "Promise?"_

"_Hell yes. I promise." The Australian accent makes the words so thick that Wes almost misses the swear, but not quite. He gives the blond another dark look. "National language, Wes!"_

_The Asian boy laughs. "I'm not mad about the language, but I'm worried about you."_

_Little Nick whispers something in Wes' ear, and grabs Jeff's round little wrist. He pushes the sleeve of the blond's track suit back. The silvery pink marks and the bright red burn that marr the teenager's arm stand out in sharp relief against the child's pale skin. _

_Wes squeezes the child closer, and kisses his forehead gently. "Are you floating, kid?"_

_Jeff nods vigorously. _

"_Is that that why you went out running alone? 'Cause you were losing yourself again?" Wes looks concerned._

_Jeff nods._

"_Except you were overdoing it, and you didn't tell anyone." The older boy frowns, but he still looks caring. "So, I guess the question is why?"_

_Jeff reaches for Nick's hand, and then drops it. "School, and the ruggers are losing, and everything with Nick, and my dad and … parents' weekend."_

"_Your mom is coming?"_

"_My mom and dad and stepmom." Jeff groans. "Mom was supposed to be doing recruiting, but it's a bye week and she got the time off at the last minute. And, dad's been planning to come since last year. It's bad enough they're on the same continent, but the same school and the same town?"_

_Wes sighs. "You've handled that before… Do they know about Nick?"_

_Nick shakes his head. "My parents know, his don't." The little brunette sounds worried. He takes the Legos out of his pocket and shows them to Wes. "But they don't like it."_

"_Because of Kevin?"_

"_Because of Kevin." Nick offers Wes one of the mini figures. "They think I'm gonna go and make a baby with somebody or something."_

_Jeff giggles. "Boys can't have babies."_

_Wes rolls his eyes knowingly. "You guys both know that when people get scared, they can be mean, right?"_

"_Like Sebby?" Jeff suggests._

_Seb looks up and smacks Jeff's leg._

"_And the people who care about you the most can sometimes be the hardest on you. It's not because they don't love you, it's because they're scared." Wes explains. "I want you guys to remember, all you guys, that friends are the family you pick. And that we love you and support you, no matter what." He squeezes them both close. _

_A preteenager with heavy brows and a mop of dark hair careens into the room. "Wes! David is making a cremebuche!" He shouts, out of breath. His face is excited, but his eyes are wary._

"_A cremebuche?" Trent asks, his little eyes growing wide._

"_A tree of crème puffs!" Jeff grins. Nick starts to wiggle in excitement. The Frog puppet knows without having to be told that that Nicky has a major sweet tooth. B grabs Trent's hand, and pulls the younger boy to his feet. Thad bends down, and scoops up Seb into a piggy back, and gallops off with the troops._

_Wes leans back down and eases Jon back up onto his lap. Jon tries to hide his wince, but the Frog puppet and Wes both see it. "Does your leg hurt, Jonny?"_

_The little boy nods and looks serious. "Like it did before. And… what if they want to take the other one?" Jonny changes. His right leg is replaced by a bandaged stump. His face is steroid-puffy half moon and his eyebrows are gone. A line is connected to the port in his shoulder, and bright yellow liquid is flowing in. "I don't want to be sick again!" He starts to cry._

_Jeffy reaches across, and pats his shoulder. "You're not gonna be sick again. But, you're gonna let them check because its fucking better to catch this shit early than wait."_

_Jonny snuffles, and wipes his snotty nose on the shoulder of his gown just past his IV port. "I don't wanna die." His quiet words are chilling._

"_They're just gonna look," Wes reassures Jon, shifting him again to find a comfortable position. "It's just like when they scan you every year."_

"_Gus died," Jon says quietly._

_Jeff raises his eyebrows. "I'm going to fucking kill Seb for giving you that book. It sucked this summer when we couldn't even say 'okay' without you bursting into tears." _

"_It hits close to home, doesn't it?" Wes is gentle._

_Jonny nods. "And I feel bad, 'cause here I'm hogging all the attention and Jeff is overwhelmed by his family and Hunt is…" _

"_Hunt is hurt and sick." Jeff says quietly._

"_Somebody hurt him," Jon agrees and then gives a great big sniff. _

_The Frog marionette feels decidedly uncomfortable. He wants to hop away, but there is no where for him to go, so he stays paralyzed on the shelf, watching and listening._

_Wes looks between the two. "Like Thad?"_

"_Yes. No. Sort of." Jon confirms. "Like Thad, but not like Thad." _

_Wes puts his arms around the two boys shoulders, and Jeff snuggles in. "When did it happen?" The older boy is serious._

"_Long ago and far away." Jeff's voice is a sing-song. "Long ago and far away, Wesley."_

_Wes frowns. "You guys know what you have to do, then?"_

_The little ones nod._

"_Listen if he wants to talk," The Asian guy directs them. "And let him know that it's okay if he doesn't. Remind him that whatever happened wasn't his or her fault. No matter what he or she did, no matter what they wore, no matter what they said, it wasn't their fault. Even if they said yes, and then changed their mind and said no. Because you're allowed to change your mind about things that happen with your special place and people need to listen to you. Even if they had alcohol or something else. Even if they were dating. Even if the person bought your friend a present or food."_

"_Okay, Wes" Jonny sighs. _

"_And whatever they chose to do, it's okay." Wes reminds the boy. "If they decide to tell the police and press charges, that's good, and they're strong. If they decide not to tell anyone because they're afraid of the consequences, it's because they're strong as well. If they get up every morning and face their day, they're super heroes, and if there are days you friend can't get out of bed, it's not because they're weak, its because they're human. If they break down and cry or stay stoic or switch between the two, it's all okay. Just be there. … And if you need to talk to me and not tell me who it is, because you need support, I'm here for you."_

_Jeff starts crying, and curls against Wes' chest. Jon leans in and gives the older boy a sloppy, wet little boy kiss. Frog turns away, and he feels tears in his eyes. Because apparently frogs cry. He doesn't want to cry here, though. He wants to run away. But he can't. _

"_We should go find the others before Nicky eats all the crèmebuche!" Jeff straightens up like the idea hit him in the head. "All that wheat might make him sick!"_

_Wes lets the little boy go, and he scrambles to his feet. He stands up, still holding Jon on his hip._

"_Wait! I want to bring the frog!" Jon says, squirming._

_Wes carries Jon over, and they pick up Frog from the shelf, and then they leave the room. Safe in Jon's arms, the little marionette lets himself cry._

He wakes up, and he knows he's in a hospital, somewhere. He always knows that when he wakes up. There are tubes and tethers everywhere. He's got an IV in his right elbow and his left wrist. Probably blood or clotting factor and fluids or painkillers. He's pretty sure he's riding some sort of pain killer high. Probably because his back and his leg are still on fire. And… immobilized. He's up in some kind of traction, which holds his foot and leg still. There's oxygen under his nose, he can smell the plastic tubing. No one has bothered to smear it with lip gloss to mask the scent, the way they used to when he was a child.

He opens his eyes, and the world above him has returned to the familiar glasses-less haze. He can see the red-black bag hanging over him, a stark contrast to the other clear IVs. They're giving him blood, then. He's probably lost some blood to internal bleeding. He wonders who took out his contacts for him, and doesn't want to think about it. At least he doesn't feel like he's slept with sand and grit in his eyes.

Above him is a circle of fuzzy faces against the haze. He slowly brings a hand to his face to block the bright light. He cups around his eye, partially to shield again, and partially because the IV is forcing his position.

The side of his hand comes away wet.

_A/N: First and foremost, I want to wish the happiest of 22nd birthdays to Pi-on-a-skateboard. She is seriously an amazing friend, an amazing writer, an amazing scientist, and a beautiful person. You guys can blame her for some of the zanier ideas… okay, and a fair number of other things that come up here. Just… THANK YOU! And the best for the next year and many more!_

_Oh, and yes. If you can catch the Warbler with your gluten-free birthday cremebuche, you can totally hug him. :P_

_In yet another Americanism, Oshkosh is the brand name of children's overalls (dungarees). I love you, awesome international readers! _

_Also, this felt like too good an opportunity to pass up in mentioning a certain book about some infinities being smaller than others. Props to people who can name it. A one shot to the person who can tell me the name of the person the book was written for/because of, and the name of the foundation associated with it._

_Thank you to everyone who keeps reading! Shout outs to __**NiffAreForever**__, __**Youdontknowme06**__, __**PenMagic**__, __**Bookworm92**__, and __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**_

_Questions, comments, concerns, critiques or suggestions of ways to get the Baby Warblers back all welcome. _

_- C65_


	35. Chapter 35

It takes him a while to come truly awake. He floats at an intersection of consciousness, myth, nightmare and dream for an indeterminate amount of time. He could be comatose. He could be dead (although he's pretty sure he isn't). He could be asleep. He could be in faery or wonderland.

He falls back into his body and the real world as he becomes aware of a sudden, urgent need in his belly.

He hurts. Goddamit. He hurts.

And … he has to pee.

The immediacy and urgency of the need forces him to communicate. He coughs, blinks this eyes open again (despite their uselessness without corrective lenses), and tries to speak. He vaguely remembers faces, and doesn't think that he'd be left alone for some reason. "Somebody? I gotta pee?"

Someone presses a pair of glasses into his hand without touching him. They're getting surprisingly good at giving him things without touching him. Although, he's not sure he'd mind it if the other Warblers brushed his hand. He trusts them.

"I'm gonna call the nurse, Frog. You put on your glasses."

There's a low tone as the nurse gets called. He feels along the bed for the call button, and it gets passed to him.

"You've got a morphine pump, too." Another remote. "But, we've going to keep the one to the TV. Because you've got shit tastes. Seriously, I'm not watching another Pawn Stars Marathon."

Someone, Jeff he thinks, although he's not sure how Jeff got here, laughs.

He tries to lift his arms to put the glasses onto his face, but the IVs restrict his movement. He can't bend his elbows enough to put the frames on his face without hurting. He groans in pain.

A hand reaches over and carefully takes the frames away from him. "Can I put these on for you?" Sebastian is surprisingly gentle as he brings the world back into focus. Seb studies the pair of IVs "They suck."

He nods. He hates not being able to move his arms. He's debating asking for a permanent line. It has to be better than this. "They do." His voice is hoarse.

He glances around at the circle of faces. Jon is sitting on the blue vinyl hospital sleeper. He's still wearing his uniform trousers, one leg pinned up. Jon's jacket is off, and his sleeves are rolled up. His crutches are propped against the wall, between an IV hanger and the hospital bed headboard. Sebastian is perched on a chair he's clearly dragged from the waiting room. He's got his little black case – the one that leaks blue strips and freaks out his roommate – open on his lap, and there's a sports bag at his feet. Sebastian is dressed down: jeans, a couple of polo shirts, and sneakers. Jeff has commandeered another waiting room chair. The Aussie wears athletic shorts and a long sleeved t-shirt. He sits nervously, fidgeting with a thick rubber band around his wrist. He can't believe how defeated the blond looks.

"Everything okay, Jeff?" He asks. He reaches out, offering a hand.

Jeff's palm slides into his, and the fingers curl around. Jeff squeezes gently. "I'm scared," he says quietly. "Scared and tired and overwhelmed. But I'm pretty fucking sure you can guess why?"

He motions toward his immobilized leg. "No idea."

Jeff sighs. "You're a bastard."

"I'm a bastard who has to pee," He reminds them. Drugs get rid of his filters. Well, he retains more filters than a normal person would, but he still loses more of his filters than he'd like.

The nurse arrives as he's complaining. He looks up to meet her eyes. With his glasses, he can see the face of the reasonably attractive nurse. She's young, just out of college, and small. She has a round face, and mousy brown hair. Looking up at the nurse, his eyes get wide.

She brings back another day, another dislocated hip, another time being powerless. Caleb was powerless. He doesn't trust anyone who looks like that. It isn't a logical thing, it's an emotional, gut-reflex. He feels powerless. Absolutely powerless and terrified. She's going to hurt him again. She's going to hurt Caleb. She's going to hurt little Jeffy or Jonny or Sebby. He doesn't understand why Maribeth is a nurse. He doesn't understand why Maribeth is _his _nurse.

The constant beeping of his heart rate monitor speeds up to a rapid tattoo of panic. He feels the pounding in his hip as well. It's like someone is jamming a knife into his leg repeatedly, in time with the beeping.

"No, no, no." He whimpers. He squeezes Jeff's hand. "Tell her to go away."

Sebastian takes control. "Could we get Avi or Sylvia, please?" His tone leaves no room for argument. He gets up and walks out with the woman.

As the pair leaves, his heart rate goes down. And then he realizes how badly he has to pee, and he feels the tears in the corner of his eyes. It doesn't matter that his leg is on fire. Not being able to pee is making him cry.

A few seconds later, a matronly woman in Bart Simpson scrubs appears. "Hi Hunter, I'm Sandra. What can I do for you?"

He likes Sylvia immediately. She talks to him like he's a person, and not sick.

"I have to pee." The color rises in his cheeks.

Sylvia glances at the two remaining boys. "If you gentlemen will excuse us."

Jon and Jeff scramble up and hurry out.

Sylvia helps him quickly and efficiently, and leaves him feeling relieved in more way than one.

He asks his questions quickly, while she checks his blood pressure and takes a tube of blood. "How bad is it?"

She raises her eyebrows, listening for the Korotkoff sounds of his blood pressure.

She raises her eyebrows. "I should get a doctor. They can explain."

He puts out a hand to stop her, but avoids contact. "Can I see my chart?"

Sylvia hesitates. "Right posterior dislocation, but the X-rays were clean. You didn't break anything. And, you've got some bruising and bleeding." She checks the IV bags over his head. "I'm going to get you another bag."

The nurse disappears, and returns with a red-black bag. Its disconcerting to realize that she changed his bag of blood, and that he's needed at least two pints transfused. He's bleeding badly, then. He doubts he'll be out anytime soon.

Jeff and Jon wander back in. Jon settles into the hospital recliner with a wince. Jeff glances over. "Do you want some ibuprofen?"

Jon winces and rubs his hip. "Yes." His words are more forceful than usual. "God, yes."

Jeff reaches into the sports bag at his feet, and pulls out a bottle of medicine. The small white bottle arches between the IV lines and the pulley system holding his leg in place.

Sylvia glares at the two of them. "What's your number?"

He thinks about it for a few minutes. "A seven or eight," he decides.

Sylvia makes a note in Hunter's chart, and glances over at Jon. "And yours, Jon?"

The beatboxer turns red, then white, and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like five.

Sylvia motions toward the empty bed. "Hop up, Jon."

Jon limps to the second bed, and flops down with a grunt. "Are you going to put an IV in now?" He winces. "I'm having a PET Scan tomorrow morning, NPO."

Sylvia goes for the IV kit and a few syringes of pain killer.

Jeff half-stands, but Jon waves him off. "Stay with Hunt."

He realizes that Jeff has slipped his hand back into his. "Has anyone called my sisters?"

Jon and Jeff exchange a long-suffering look.

"That good?"

Sylvia comes back in and injects something into his IV port. He starts to feel himself floating again, but he clings to Jeff and Jon, the awful call with his sisters, his pain, and the island of reality.

"She yelled at us, and asked why we were calling." Jeff sounds defeated, and rubs at his arm. "She didn't really seem to care that you'd been hurt. Just said to submit your bill and that we shouldn't trust anything you say on painkillers."

He sighs. "Sounds like Sarai," he agrees.

"Are they coming to parent's weekend?" Jon's words are tight as Sylvia starts his IV.

He shrugs. "That's the plan. Supposedly."

"Fuck. That's going to be fun." Jeff goes pale. "My mum, my dad, Jon's parents post cancer freak out, and your sisters. Fuck me with a rusty rapier."

"If my sisters show up," he says, dubiously. "They've almost never come to a school event before. Except when I was six and we made those puppets and mine fell off the stick. And we sang songs in French. Then both my sisters and my granddad came."

Jeff and Jon take a few moments to process the idea, as Seb, Nick, and an unfamiliar man in a rumbled suit come in.

Nick goes to the bedside recliner, and curls into it, rubbing Jeff's shoulder. Sebastian settles into one of the visitor's chairs, and the man leans against the window.

"Hunt, this is Mr. Young." Even in pain, Jon makes an effort to make an introduction. "He's umm, the guidance counselor. If you know, you need to talk to someone."

He feels himself flush. "Of course the person who decides if I end up in ALS or German is the person who comes to the hospital with me."

Jon and Jeff exchange looks. "Something like that," they agree.

Sylvia knocks and re-appears. "I'm sorry to do this, gentlemen, but visiting hours are ending. You and the rest of your crazy band of brothers can come back at nine tomorrow."

Nick wraps his arms tightly around Jeff and pulls his boyfriend into his lap. They kiss each other, and Nick murmurs words into Jeff's ear and nick.

The rest of the boys in the room have the decency to ignore the way the brunette and blond are intertwined.

Sebastian kicks a couple of gym bags toward Jon's bed and points out Hunter's big black day pack. "If you guys need anything…"

Mr. Young escorts the pair out. Jeff looks longingly after Nick, until Jon limps over to pull him onto the bed.

"Well boys, it's Thursday night. Are we feeling like 300, The Green Lantern, or Kick-Ass?" Jon tries to distract them, suggesting a movie night. Or maybe, he's trying to distract himself.

He lets himself float off as Jon and Jeff popped the movie in. He doesn't want to think about parent's weekend, or the fact that they're not letting him eat incase he needs surgery. He's going to enjoy stupid movies featuring Nicolas Cage and try to forget his pain.

_A/N: Okay, for those who haven't figured it out, I went through a phrase where I wanted to be a doctor. Korotkoff sounds are the pounding or pressure you feel when someone takes your blood pressure (you can hear them if you're listening with a stethoscope). You hear sounds because blood flow is restricted and undergoing turbulent flow, like when water eddies around rocks. When the flow gets laminar, or flows smoothly, the sounds stop. … And this is totally scientific outreach, right? _

_Okay, Jeffy is up next! Im super excited for this chapter._

_Thank you to everyone who has been reading, following, favoriting, or glancing at this shutting it going, "This is Crap!". Shout outs to __**PhoenixInAshes**__, __**B00kw0rm92**__, __**youdontknowme06**__, __**NiffAreForever**__, and __**PenMagic**__!_

_Questions, Comments, Concerns, Suggestions, Criticisms, or prompts all welcome. –C65_


	36. Interlude 3: Late Night Fights

_WARNING: This chapter deals intimately with self-harm and suicidal thoughts. If you find these things triggering, I am happy to provide a summary of the chapter that does not include references to these things. This is not intended as glorification of self-destructive behaviors._

Jeff is exhausted to the point of crying and he cannot sleep. His body craves the rest it needs to heal torn muscles and fatigued limbs. His mind craves the sleep it needs to quiet it self and face a new day. His spirit craves the sleep it needs to find grounding and earn fresh perspective. But, he cannot find the rest needs. He cannot find the internal quiet to stop fighting _everything_ and fall asleep.

He doesn't think he could sleep, even if he was in the safest place he could think of: back in his dorm room at Dalton, curled up in Nick's arms. He hasn't been sleeping well in days. He's been exhausted and feeding his caffeine addiction and completely unable to sleep. And, as his exhaustion gets worse, so does the panic filling his body. It's the third night he's been unable to sleep. It's the third night that he has been filled with the all-consuming empty fear. It's the third night that he feels the urge to destroy something: himself.

He's so tired of fighting, and so scared of what will happen if he stops. He's not sure the battle is worth waging. He's not sure that _he _is a battle worth fighting for. It would be so easy to just give in, and let himself give up on _everything_. It would be so easy to let his hand slip and destroy himself.

He is so tired, and he simply wants to sleep, but he cannot. The lights are too bright. The noises are too loud. Mr. Young snores. Jon snuffles in his sleep, a low, gentle sound that is endearing and obnoxious at the same time. Hunter's breath is even and slow. The heart moniters and blood pressure cuff continue their mechanical whispering, and the nurses come and go every hour, and they're not as silent as they think. Plus, the chair/bed is damn uncomfortable. He's not sure who designed it, but he's pretty sure they were a sadist.

He pulls on his jeans and a ratty OSU hoodie and shoves his feet into his vans. He feels the cool, calming weight of the silver lighter in his pocket, and the crisp thinness of the blade. He'd taken it out of a pencil sharpener his mum had bought at the beginning of the school year. He can sure them alone or in combination, depending on how much damage he wants to inflict. His cell phone weighs against his leg, where a wrinkle in his boxers and the weight of the small electronic cause a stinging pain.

He walks by the nurses' station, invisible to their eyes. He always feels the most invisible when he's at his most vulnerable. He agonizes over asking for help, and prays that no one will recognize the signs of a break down. He wants someone to come and stop him, and yet he makes an effort to insure that no one will be able to. There have only been a few people who have ever seen though the pain and the mask: Wes, Hunter, Sebastian, Thad and Jon. They've each gone through their own hell.

The late September air is cold, but not enough to bring him back into himself. The list of his problems rises in his head.

He has to get good grades so he can get into a good college so he can get into a good medical school so he can get a good residency so he can get a good job so he can help save lives.  
He needs to lead the rugby team to victory so he can carry on his family tradition and make his father proud.  
He needs to help the Warblers get to victory so he can carry on Dalton tradition and make the alumni and the school and his brothers proud.  
He needs to figure out the perfect song to sing for Parent's weekend. He needs to determine how to balance his mother and his father. And Nick. Oh dear god.

The thought of his parents, together, in the same state, scares him. The idea of them with his precious Nick… the idea makes his blood run cold. He will fight anyone and anything to keep them apart and to keep his life under control. Even if it kills him.

He gets his passion and his drive from his parents. They are two of the most passionate people he's ever met. Two of the most similar. And two of the most incompatible.

His mother and father met in Barcelona in '92. His mum was a junior trainer for the American water polo team, his father played for Australia's football squad. Their romance had been as hot as the summer winds that wound through the streets of the city, as whimsical as the buildings of Antonio Gaudi, and as contentious as an argument between a _sucessionista_ and a _nationalista_. His mother's eyes still twinkle with both tears and fond memories as she relives the passionate summer fling. She followed him to Australia, and found a job working as an athletic trainer for the Sydney Roosters as a trainer. They got married in March of 1995, and Jeff and his recently divorced mother found themselves trapped in the San Francisco airport on September 11, 2001, trying to immigrate back to Virginia, where she'd grown up.

He doesn't remember much of the five years that his parents were together. He had been a small child. But, he knows that things were not easy or calm. His parents fought, constantly. His mother was a big city girl, from just out Washington, DC. His father was a country boy from the bush. His mum was a health nut and a bit of a homebody. She liked to come home to a clean house, a light dinner with a glass of chardonnay and a romantic comedy after a long day of checking the injuries of sweaty, hairy men. Her husband preferred to go out with boys for a pint and a round of pub trivia in the arvo. They were both self-obsessed children trying to raise a child. It had been an explosion waiting to happen and part of him was amazed the eruption had held off for so long. After the divorce, his parents had only seen each other a few times. Most had been disastrous.

His father has been planning to come for parent's weekend for almost a year. His mum's football schedule is interfering; she and her Trojans were scheduled to play that day. And nothing comes between his mum and football. Not even her son and his accomplishments. So, it seemed like a good time for his dad to visit. An opportunity to make his father proud, before he breaks the man's heart. He's pretty sure that the combination of "I'm top of my class and captain of the school Rugby team and run competitive track and might be getting a sports scholarship" will out weight the blows of "I'm a soloist in my school's show choir" and "I'm currently in love with my male roommate."

He knows he has a battle coming. Not just a battle to keep his parents from destroying each other (and taking Dalton Academy, Westerville and possibly the entire state of Ohio, out as collateral damage), but a battle for them to accept him for who and what he is.

The problem is that he's not sure he can keep fighting. And he's not sure he can stop.

Nick, who watches him and take care of him and worries about him and loves him, watches almost impassively as he gets angry and a little obsessed and starts ranting. The Texan will roll over on the beds they've pushed together and ask him a simple question. "Babe, is this worth fighting for?"

He leans against the rough brick wall of the hospital, and the cold of the embedded stones sting his cheek. _Is this worth fighting for? Am I worth fighting for?_

God, he doesn't know. Is he worth the energy to fight for? Is he worth the effort to keep from destroying himself? Can he implode without a supernova? Apoptosis instead of Necrosis? End with a whisper? Can he end this fight with minimal harm to himself and no harm to anyone else?

He's so tired. He just wants to stop fighting and lay down his head and disappear into an oblivion.

He does not want to die. He will hurt too many people. He will leave things un finished. He will be unworthy, and unlovable and cowardly and broken and the world will go on without him. If he dies… if he kills himself, he will have lost the battle. Even if the battle wasn't worth fighting to being with. And, he's afraid. He's so afraid.

But, there is no rest for the weary and miles to go before he can sleep.  
He needs strength for the journey; manna in the desert.

Not wanting to die doesn't mean that he doesn't want to hurt himself. He wants a violent reaction. He needs a violent reaction. He needs energy to fuel him, energy to release him from his paralysis. He needs a discharge, a lightening strike, a way to return to ground.

He shrugs out of the big red hoodie. He slides his thumb out of the hole he's worn in the sleeve. His mum bought him the windcheater as a peace offering just before she abandoned him to go be with her boys in California. In all fairness, he could have gone along. He was just sick of the macho locker room culture and his mum never being home and the way the assistant coach at USC had eyed him. If he admitted it to himself, he'd been a pretty little boy. Even after all this time, the hoodie still retains some of the scents that reminded him of home. So, he wears it for comfort and strength.

It's cold in his singlet, and he shivers. But, the resolve and the quick, rising panic flowing through him keep him from truly feeling the cold. He's not thinking, not really. He's acting on impulse. Nothing will be right until he takes care of this. Nothing will be right until he comes back to his body, until he's whole again. Nothing will be right until he breaks himself.

He looks down at his arm. There's the fresh white bandage that Nick insisted on applying this morning. The one that he hadn't mentioned to anyone until Jeff went for his noontime run. And, there were the old silver scars from other times things got bad.

And there are names. Scrawled over and over again in blue-black ink. He tried butterflies, once, but they were too girly. Names are gender neutral. He reads through them, and they give him hope.

Nick. Wes. Jon. Trent. Blaine. David. Thad. Sebastian. Callum. Hunter. Ari. Neal. Samuel. Lex. Jocelyn. Joe. Sid. Abby. Nick. Christian. Marie. Steph. Hannah. Ray. Tim. Lindy.

He can't do it. He can't burn himself over their names. He cannot betray their trust that way.

But he's running when he needs to fight. He needs to stop and make a stand. And it's nearly three in the morning. He can't go running now. He can't go anywhere now.

He flips through his phone, and goes to his contacts. His finger hovers over the button for Wes. He shakes his head. He loves the older boy to death, and even though Wes hasn't said anything, his fatigue is worse. He's pretty sure that Wes is getting sicker and not telling them. Which would be typical Wes. Hell, it would be typical Warbler. Jon is the same way. But, it means that he cannot call Wes. Because he cannot wake his friend and he cannot stand it if no one picks up.

He moves down the list. There's the number labeled HOPE. 1-800-273-8255. His fingers hover. He wants to call it. But he doesn't think he deserves to. He doesn't want to kill himself. And he doesn't know what he'll say to the person on the other end. "Hi, I don't want to kill myself." … "Hi, I'm crazy." … "Hi, I just want to go to sleep." He'll waste their precious time. He'll waste their resources. Resources they need for people who are actually a danger to themselves. People who are actually considering taking their own lives.

Tears are running down his face, and snot is filling his nose, and he doesn't know where it came from. He wipes his face on his singlet, and considers his options. He's got his lighter, still, and the blade. And maybe, just maybe, if he cuts himself, he'll be able to go back up and sleep.

He doesn't want to worry the ones that can handle it.

Jon doesn't need any more worry. Not with the PET scan tomorrow (A small, detached part of him is a little bit jealous that they're going to inject _anti-matter _into Jon. It's that horrible bit that enjoyed cutting up the cats in biology and running his fingers through their intestines and stretching their mysentary. The part that he keeps under wraps as much as he can). If the cancer is back… if its spread… in Jon's bones or his blood or his lungs or his brain, it will be a blow. Jon will need comforting. Nick will need comforting. Cancer is a scary bastard.

Hunter doesn't need any more worry, not with the physical and psychological trauma (must ask Jon what he meant during the call with Wes). The new boy is so jumpy, so disinclined toward touch. It's not just the diseases, although physical caution probably weighs heavily on Hunter. No, there's something else there. A haunting. A past history. A demon. He's glad that Hunter was willing to hold his hand when the nurse came in, but he's afraid of testing the tentative friendship.

He's pretty sure that Sebastian is back to his old ways again. The ones where he doesn't eat, and then he does and doesn't take insulin, and then he "forgets" his pump. Because nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, unless it's sleeping off low grade ketoacidosis on a Saturday while effectively losing ten pounds.

Wes … Wes is Wes. And Wes is sick. He doesn't talk about it, but there was an exhaustion in the older boy's voice. The sound of a flare and cachexia and steroids and bloody stool and hospitalization and surgery and feet of intestines. He know stress agrivates Wes' flares. He can't be responsible for making the older boy sicker.

And Thad is pushing for college, and worrying about his father. Tip-toeing around his parents when ever he goes home. He's trying to figure out how far he can get away without actually being cut off, and how much he can wiggle before the hammer comes down. For Thad, there has never been much room. For Thad, the idea of carrying problems _different _from his own is overwhelming. Thad's not ready, but Thad could understand.

And, he cannot tell the others. Because they will not understand. And that will hurt him more. There will be pity. There will be confusion. There will be judgement and shame and blame and guilt and anger and emptiness and it will just MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE. He can still hear the disgust in Lex's voice when he admitted it to her. Depressed as she was, Lex couldn't imagine needing to hurt herself to feel release. He can still see the sadness, emptiness and hurt in Nick's eyes when he admits how badly he wants to hurt himself is almost as bad as _not _doing the deed. Oh, Jeff is glad that his love, his soul mate, his roly-poly half (he really needs to stop reading philosophy before bed) doesn't understand what it is to need a violent release. But, he hates it that Nick thinks it's his fault, or that he could intervene and save Jeff. And he hates how angry and frustrated it makes Nick to think that his love is failing. It's not imperfect love. It's imperfect Jeff.

He pulls on his sweatshirt, still fingering the blade in the pocket, and walks back into the hospital. He takes the silent, eerily bright elevator up to the silent floor where his classmates and teacher sleep. Moving through the hospital like this, it feels like he's in a parallel universe.

He goes into the bathroom. He turns on the light. He locks the door.

The blade is cold against his skin. Cold and sharp and wonderful.

He traces the outline of his shoulder blade, and crosses it with a straight line down his back. He traces the outline of his spine. He runs the blade along his ribs, carving a cross hatching on the sensitive skin.

He strikes over and over again.

The violence and pain reminding him that he is alive.  
He is not dead.  
He is still fighting.

He finishes with a grand gesture: sticking his finger down his throat and gagging until everything inside him – his dinner of a burger, poptarts and gummi worms, and the apple he'd eaten as a snack and the bacon he'd had for breakfast and possibly some egg and maybe last night's beans – everything in his stomach and his intestine comes pouring out into the bowl, and he's left empty and shaking and cold and grounded on the tiles of the bathroom.

He washes his mouth out in the sink, and brushes his teeth with the travel tooth paste as his finger.

And then he pulls on his hoodie, and goes and curls back into the recliner chair.

Even though the springs poke him in the back, he's asleep in the time it takes for Hunter's blood pressure cuff to inflate, deflate, inflate, deflate, and trigger an alarm at the nurse's station.

_A/N: This is an intensely personal chapter for me (closer to some of the early to mid chapters in _Control _and more concrete than _Battles_). I don't want to glorify self harm, I don't want to pretend that I have all the answers or even necessarily know the questions. But, I also wanted to explain what Jeff was doing and where he was and why. I love the idea of Jeff fighting for something, and fighting himself._

_The number in his phone labeled as HOPE is, in fact, the US National Suicide Hotline. (Again, 1-800-273-8255 in the US) They do not only deal with suicide, but also self-harm, anxiety, etc. It's a 24/7 free national hotline, and people will take your call at any time. Jeff's logic about not calling was stupid (although is logic that has been used). If you need help, its seriously good to call._

_For wonderful international people:  
01-713-3374 (Australia),  
1-800-SUICIDE (US, UK, and Canada and Singapore)  
8457-90-90-90 (UK)._

_I want to thank everyone who has read/reviewed in the last twenty-four hours. Shout outs to __**B00kw0rm92**__, __**Eraman**__, __**NiffAreForever**__, __**PenMagic**__, and __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**__. I will get back to all of you, I promise. But, data analysis waits for no girl, and apparently neither does a lost blond Warbler who refuses to let me sleep until his battles have been fought._

_Feedback welcomed and celebrated. –C65_


	37. Chapter 37

"What's that alarm?"

"347 is in the weeds."

"He's been bad since we've brought him in. He's had how many bags of blood?"

"Three pints."

"I'll get the crash cart."

"I'll go and be there on hand."

"Can we get a doctor up here?"

"He's tachycardic."

"What the fuck is happening?"

…

"He's crashing."

...

"Clear!"

…

"Clear!"

* * *

_Each breath is a blinding white stab of pain. He tries to stick to quick and shallow pants. Panting isn't so bad; it feels like a hundred hornets in his chest instead of a single cleaver. Oh, his head still swims and him limbs feel weak, like hollowed out glass, but at least no one is stabbing him in the chest. The problem is that he's going to faint if he keeps panting like Mr. Shelby's old dog in the muggy Texas heat. And, every time he feels himself slipping over the edge into unconsciousness or like he's going to vomit everywhere, he takes a deep breath and gets a white-hot shock of agony._

_He raises his hand, because he does not care, cannot care, about balancing equations when his chest is on fire. The teacher looks at him, and decides that he isn't faking it. Of course he isn't faking it. He might be an idiot who agreed to play football at recess (becase he was sick of being the weird new kid and he wants to fit in) but he can't really fake this. So, Dominic Berteluchi and Eddy Salvator lead him out of the classroom. _

_Nic and Ed, they're the coolest boys in school. So, he stumbles after them, out to the old iron fire escape by the third floor teacher's lounge. Nic spreads out his red sweater, and Eddy loosens his tie. He strips off his own tie. It's constricting his neck. Nic pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and Ed produces a lighter. Each of the boys takes a long pull on the cigarette, before they pass it to him. He doesn't want to say no. But the world is spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning._

_He wakes up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. There's a tube down his throat, and for once, he feels like he's getting enough oxygen. It hurts like hell, but he can breathe. Even with the knife in his chest, there is nothing more beautiful than oxygen._

* * *

"We have him stabilized, but there's a tear in the artery wall in his leg. We need to close it does any more permanent damage."

"SO DO IT!"

"Jinx! Jeff and Seb and Nick and Jon."

"So not the time, Toaster boy."

"We need guardian's permission."

"I'm the acting guardian. But, I should call his sisters."

"We need to do this sooner."

…

"You've got permission."

* * *

_Bookend men in suits stood at the four corners of the auditorium. Even though he was in the middle of flipping over Even's shoulders and harmonizing to Van Morrison's _Brown Eyed Girl, _he still saw them. In their identical, off the rack black suits that didn't quite hide the shoulder holsters and their almost invisible ear-pieces, these were the boogie men of his childhood. His sisters never warned about monsters in the woods, or ghosts that could get him. But, these real life boogie men… they were ingrained in his nightmares._

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling  
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side  
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling  
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

_Their set ends with the crisp, poignant lyrics of Hunter's _Danny Boy. _The sweet notes shiver through him, and remind him of his fate, if the men in suits should get to him or his brothers. _

And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me  
And all my grave will warm and sweeter be  
And then you'll kneel and whisper that you love me  
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

_Back in the greenroom, the boys were drinking water and blowing off steam when the men in the suits appeared. They pulled him aside. _

"_Listen, James," one of the suit bookends growled. "We need information, and no one gets hurt."_

_He glances around the room, looking for one of the basses. "I'm Kellen," he objects. "Jimmy is over there, with the tie around his head." _

_The man hits him hard, in the shoulder. It responds by subluxing, and not-quite dislocating. "I know who you are, James Eliot. And I know you know about your parents."_

"_My parents are dead." His voice breaks, with the physical and emotional pain._

"_Liar!" The man hits his right hip hard enough to bruise. He can't tell if it's gotten dislocated as well, but he suspects he'll need medical attention. At this point, the only thing holding him up is the suited bookend._

_At a sign from the leader – a big beefy man with hands the size of history books – his thug dropped him. "We'll be driving you gentlemen back to school," the leader announces. "There's a snowstorm coming down on the front-range, so we need to go, now."_

"_But the ceremony," objected Hunter._

_The leader gave him a very dark look. "We don't want to get stuck in the storm!" The man growls._

_The thugs escort the boys out to their bus, two holding him up. His hip is on fire, and sitting on the bus makes him feel like he's going to pass out._

* * *

"You're coming in at five? To Columbus International? … Yep, we'll have someone there to meet you."

"Can we make a sign? Can I make a sign?"

"Only if it doesn't have glitter. Or toaster bits."

"We'll have a sign. S-A-R-A-I? Is that right?"

"Or dead Barbies."

"Ow! Sebastian! That was Hunter! That wasn't me! Don't hit me! Don't hit me!"

"Shut up, mate! He's on the fucking phone!"

"Okay, we'll see you soon, Sarai. Thanks. Bye!"

"You can't hit the guy with cancer!"

"You don't have cancer."

"Fine, you can't pummel the guy on crutches!"

"AHHH! Nick! Take me with you!"

"You can't leave."

"Take Seb with you!"

* * *

_The cool night air is heavy with acrid smoke and salt and sulfur. Cheap perfume and rubbing alcohol and the bitter, medicinal scent of betadine form a strange top note. He leans against his sister, huddled in his blanket and clutching his toy frog to his chest. Mommy and Daddy brought it back to him from the Amazon the last time he went, and gave it to him for being a brave boy when they took the cast off his legs. And then they went away again. He'd rather have cried and been a baby and not have the frog than have them go away again. He tries to breath, but the air catches in his chest. It makes him cough, and feel sick. _

_He reaches up to tug on his big sister's nightshirt. She's barefoot, with her curly auburn hair falling loose to her lower back in wild tangles. _

"_Sari!" His voice is quiet and hoarse. He sounds like a frog. The doctors put a tube down his nose, and it hurt more than when he had strep. They told him that if he would eat, they'd take it out. He didn't want food. He wasn't going to eat until his parents came back. But, his parents didn't come back and his granddad told the doctors to put the tube in his nose. "Sari!" He says it as loud as he can._

_She can't hear him over the noise of the house alarm, and the triton sirens and the howling of the wind and the crashing of the surf against the rocks. They blend together into a single, heart stopping melody over which nothing can be understood._

_And, Sari is busy. She's staring at the glow in the dark night behind him. The black silhouette of a haunted house is outlined in red-orange flames. Red, white and blue emergency lights add a macabre white light to the scene. The house might once have been a home, but now it isn't. It's just an empty shell._

_He takes another breath, and coughs into his sister's leg. She finally notices him, and scoops him up._

"_What is it, Jamie?" She lisps from the retainer she wears when she's sleeping._

"_I can't breathe and I cut my foot." He sticks out his blood toes. _

"_How long, Froggy?" She shifts him to her hip._

_He puts a finger in his mouth and sucks it while he thinks. "When we were leaving the house on our tummies."_

_Sari sighs, and picks her way across the rocky lot toward the flashing emergency lights. He hides his face in her shoulder; he doesn't like firemen or police or ambulance men. They come when he's sick and they take him to the hospital and he has to stay there. _

_Sarai finds an empty ambulance, and puts her baby brother onto the cot. "My baby brother, James Elliot. He's got hemophilia and he can't breathe and his heart is on the wrong side," she tells the techs in a rush._

_They put a mask on him, and even though it smells like plastic and smoke, he can breathe better. _

_Lara comes over, and leans in with Sarai. The three children watch as their granddad gets carried out on a stretcher. His face is covered with a cloth, and his chest is bare. Blood is flowing from his chest, like a river. Granddad bleeds the same way Jamie does._

"_It looks like our world is ending if fire," Lara whispers to her younger sister._

_Sarai shivers. "And ice," she agrees._

* * *

"…But if I had to perish twice  
I think I know enough of hate  
To say that for destruction ice  
Is also great  
And would suffice." The women's voice pauses. "Frog, it's time to wake up, or I'm going to freeze your ass." The last she says in German.

He doesn't want to wake up. Well, he doesn't want to go back to the nightmares, either, but he doesn't want to wake up. It hurts. His hip hurts. His side hurts. His chest hurts. His throat hurts. And… there's a tube down his throat.

He's woken up this way a few times. His practical side tells him not to try to moan.

He blinks his eyes open, looking up at the white blur above him. He wiggles his fingers.

Sarai takes one hand. "I'm here, Frog."

Someone takes his other.

"We're here, too, mate." He can't place the Australian accent, but it makes him feel safe.

He squeezes the hand back.

* * *

_A/N: YAY WEIRD CHAPTER! I wanted this to have a weird feel, and I dunno, I've been wanting to write dialogue for a while. Some of it is supposed to be comic relief. Each of the italicized sections is a memory/dream, the rest is dialogue that's happening as Hunt/Frog/Jamie is unconscious. I hope this sastifies you as much as it has apparently satisfied my muse. He's had a rough computer-less week. _

_The poem that Sarai reads to her brother is "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost. I have once again bastardized parts of it for my purposes._

_I'm making a universal announcement here. I will say it again. You are welcome to hug any Warbler you can find who agrees to be hugged first (Trent says he likes hugs). But, I don't have any control over and can't send them off to hug you._

_Thanks to all of you lovely people who have been reading and favoretting this. Shout outs to __**Pen Magic, Eraman**_, _**NiffAreForever**__, __**B00kworm92**__, __**PhoenixInAshes**__, __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**__, and __**youdon'tknowme06**__. _

_Questions, Comments, Concerns or Critiques all welcome. –C65_


	38. Chapter 38

He tries to speak, but there's a tube in his mouth. He wants to spit it out, but he stops himself. He can't get rid of it. He probably can't breathe without it, if the rhythmic wheezing nearby is any indicator. He can't be anywhere but a hospital. And he has to be SICK for Sarai to be here, threatening him with bodily harm if he doesn't wake up. She only does that when she's really worried. She only comes when she's really worried.

He slips his hand out of the one that isn't his sister's, and tries to lift it to his face. He doesn't get far, stopped by IVs and bandages and sensors. So, he makes weird sort of circling motion by his side, trying to trace a pair of glasses in the air. God, he wishes that Lasik didn't put him at risk for bleeding.

"He wants his glasses," one of the boys watching him announces. Trent or Jon, he thinks, although he's not entirely sure who they are or where he is. His mind is slowly coming back into focus, although the world becomes sharp when he gets the heavy, black frames on his face.

Once he can see, he tries another sign. He holds an imaginary pen, and mimes scribbling. He feels someone sliding a writing implement into his hand, and paper underneath.

He skips the first, and most obvious question (where am I?), deciding that his actual location beyond _hospital_ is irrelevant and goes for the second. _WHAT HAPPEN?_

One of the boys reads it out.

"Hypovolemic shock," Sarai tells him frankly. He breaks apart the words. Hypo. Low. Volemic. Volume. Oh, God. He had a bleed somewhere and it almost killed him. One of those fantastic fringe benefits of his disease.

WHERE BLEED?

Again, someone reads the question for him.

"Your hip," comes the glib reply. (It's not from the one who read the question, but another. Jesus, how many of them are there in his room? He has to be in the fucking ICU, where they typically don't allow many visitors.) "There was an abrasion along your femoral artery, and it didn't clot."

CLOSED?

"Yeah, early Friday," the narrating voice tells him gently.

He thinks he was hurt on Thursday.

WHEN NOW?

Glances are exchanged over his head. "Saturday night."

Fuck. He has lost more than a day. And, he'll probably more. He focuses on the pressing priorities.

WHEN TUBE GONE?

Sarai is unsympathetic. "When the doctors say you can breathe on your own. You almost fucking died, Frog, give it a break if they want to keep you intubated for a bit."

ME = DARTH VADAR. SUCKS. This gets a laugh.

He turns to another pressing matter.

HURT.

"Do you want more morphine?"

YES. GOD YES.

He hears the gentle whirr of the morphine pump, and his passing acquaintance with reality is replaced by a dream world. At some point, he's aware of the ladies of Doña Alda and their dresses and bread. At another, there's The Highwayman. Sarai has a nasty habit of reading poetry in various languages aloud when she thinks he's asleep.

The tube came out somewhere during _La Belle Dame sans Merci_, he thinks. Although it might have been when Trent shoved a copy of one of the _Bloody Jack_ books into Sarai's hands and asked her to read him a real story. (Or at least, he thinks that's what happened shortly before Trent pulled down his pants to show off a blue dolphin tattoo… to which Sebastian had responded by jamming a wig on his head and playing folk songs on a violin. … He really hopes the second part was a drug-induced dream.)

His throat is rough and raw he's happy to be breathing on his own again. Mostly because he's tired of dreaming of a masked man in a long black coat with a red light saber who whispers in a husky voice, "Jaime, I am your father." The man is met by a bloody boy with long shoulder-length blond curls who wears old-fashioned breaches and boots and retorts, "My name is Hunter Clarington. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Not's not sure about much, but he's sure that he's never left alone.

Sometimes it's Sarai and Tennyson and Keats and Byron and Antonio Marchado and Cervantes and Dumas and Gautier.

Sometimes it's Jon and Trent, bickering like an old married couple about everything from _Pretty Little Liars_ to _Hell's Kitchen_ to _Covert Affairs_. (Trent swears he doesn't want to try Annie's shoes, but he insists so vehemently that Jon almost goes out buys him a pair of size 13 pumps. He might also have a crush on Auggie's tech… well, and Auggie himself.)

Sometimes it's Sebastian, glowering at everyone and reading a Malcom Gladwell book or a physics text or scribbling on his physics homework.

Sometimes Sebastian is joined by curly-haired Blaine, who hums constantly. Somehow he manages to be in tune.

Sometimes (rarely) Thad and once, David, sit with him. David is twitchy, and doesn't stay long. David leaves a steaming plate of anise cookies behind. He once admitted that he remembers Christmas with anise and lemon cookies that were allowed to sit overnight. David looked up a recipe online, and had promised to make them. Even though he can't eat yet (feeding tube down his nose, making his throat even more raw), he loves the smell.

Nick and Jeff curl together in the blue vinyl hospital sleeper chair and tell each other jokes and stories. Nick trails lines of kisses along Jeff's collar bones and around his wrists, where the burn marks are. But, he doesn't see and doesn't ask about the angry red scratches on Jeff's back and sides. The ones that show when Jeff spends the night alone in that blue vinyl chair and his hoodie rides up. He doesn't know if Nick is just blind, or if it's a selective blindness. Boys don't cut. And, more importantly, people cut on their arms and their thighs. Anywhere else would be silly. He wants to ask Jeff about it, but whenever he thinks of it, he's walking the snowy paths of Narnia or on a rainy plain in Spain or in Camelot or riding elephants with Hannibal (he's still not sure _how_ Hannibal got his elephants, considering that he lived in Valencia, Spain, which is closer to Africa than Persia and African elephants aren't trainable… but that was a thought best left for a time when he wasn't high as a kite. Or a student at CU Boulder on 4/20).

At some point, they start dialing back his pain medication. He still sleeps a lot, maybe because his hip doesn't hurt quite so much when he's asleep, or because being awake and in pain takes so much energy.

At some point, they switch him from the nasal feeding tube to soft foods. He tries eating one of David's cookies. It hurts going down, but it tastes so good that he eats another. That one hurts coming back up. After that, he sticks to vanilla pudding and jello and chicken broth until his stomach settles.

At some point, he realizes that the day is still starting with horrible music. He wakes up to _Total Eclipse of the Heart_ and _B-I-N-G-O_ and _The Hamster Dance_. He wakes up angry, but when he wakes up angry he stays awake. He stays lucid for just a little bit longer.

At some point, he learns that Jon's PET scan was inconclusive. There were abnormalities, but they can't decide if there was a problem with the machine or a tumor. So, they've schedule the beat boxer to go again, and then they'll probably do a biopsy if they still can't tell. Better safe than sorry.

At some point, Jeff asks him how he keeps going, and he sighs and says he doesn't know and Jeff comes back with more scratches on his back and a haunted look in his eyes. When things make more sense, he will ask Jeff what's going on. But, for now… for now he is floating.

He rolls over and goes back to sleep. Maybe everything will come together when he wakes up, and he'll be lucid again.


	39. Chapter 39

_Warning: This chapter talks about scars. It's going to make some people angry._

The most frustrating thing about being recovering from surgery is just how much he needs to sleep. The most frustrating thing about being in the hospital is that few people want to let him sleep.

He's woken up by the nurses at six-thirty so they can check him before rounds. They take his blood pressure and temperature. They disrupt his IVs and the tube in his hip and ask him for a pain score. Then, they usually help him pee. Having someone help you with such a basic bodily function is embarrassing. It's bad when they help him with the bedpan and he makes a mess. It's worse when they decide they don't have time to help him…

He dozes on and off until rounds, when he frightens the doctor's with his morning breath and his morning face. (He doesn't spend as much time in the bathroom as Jeff or Blaine or Thad or Sebastian or Trent or Jon or … most of the Warblers in the morning. Of course, David somehow manages to beat them all. He can get up and wash his face, brush in teeth, throw on clothes and be in class in less than five minutes. Or, he can get up early and make pancakes.) The doctor checks his hip and his blood pressure and tell him that he needs to ease off the pain meds. He smiles at them grouchily because he doesn't want to be up at eight am and he wants even less to have some perky resident who hasn't even broken a toe tell him about pain management. Try fucking living with chronic pain your whole fucking life and _then _you can preach about breathing through the pain and managing without drugs.

Breakfast comes just after the medical entourage leaves. He's managed to convince the kitchen and his dietician that Jello is a critical part of every meal. Of course, they yell at him when he only eats Jello and threaten him with a feeding tube again, but they'll yell if he throws up as well. So, he eats enough that he has something in his stomach when he takes his pain pills, but not so much that he'll vomit all over himself and get a stupid sponge bath again.

He goes back to sleep, and sometime mid morning, the therapist comes in to help him lift weights. If he can stay strong, his muscle and skeleton can support his weak joints. And, staying strong is in theory easier than building muscles. So, he forces himself to focus on exercise and not the million other things in the back of his head. It's hard, because he's still in traction and for the most part, he's still got a drainage tube coming out of his hip. He doesn't want to think about how much blood came out of his leg, or how long it sat there, pooling against the bones and eating away at them. So, he tries not to complain about the traction, even though it sucks.

The nurses try to clean him up with a sponge bath. It just makes him even more cross. He wants to get in a real fucking shower and feel clean. He wants to stop feeling like he's wet and can't dry.

Lunch comes, and he manages to stomach it. He's hungry, but hospital food sucks and his stomach is touchy at best. He eats what's placed in front of him, but if he actually liked his food, he could eat a lot more.

He tries for an after lunch nap. He's supposed to be studying, but it's hard to keep his eyes open after food and physical activity. Even focusing on history, which is his strong suit, he ends up nodding. Math or Chemistry are so confusing that he doesn't even try.

The first few days, Sarai comes and sits with him in the late afternoon, but she leaves once its apparent that he's out of danger. He tries to ignore how sick he must have been for Sarai to have come. He's not sure how he feels about his sister leaving; one the one hand, he wishes his family were a bit more conventional and actually visited him when he was sick. Or called. Or something. Instead, he's responsible for updating them and contacting the Trust about insurance.

Once Sarai is gone, he luxuriates until dinner arrives, along with someone from Dalton. Occasionally, the visitor brings dinner. He likes that better when the hospital provides food. It's not like he had a typical heart attack. He didn't have a cardiac infarction from blocked muscle, there is absolutely no reason for all this dry chicken and salt less veggies. He tries pointing out the problem to the dietician more than once, but she ignores him. So, they boys bring him burgers and fries or thai or Indian. Once, David sent him an entire roast chicken, fragrant with Rosemary and thyme. He about clobbered the nurse who came to take it away.

Tutoring is only partially successful. His assignments get delivered, and he tries to work through them, he really does. Usually, though, he just ends up talking with whoever has come to sit with him. Their conversations range from bizarre (A poop so good that you have to text someone about it… which lead to Nick showing a YouTube clip of his favorite Aussie comedian) to informative (cosine is adjacent over hypotenuse… and hypotenuse is just a fancy name for the long side, but it only works when you have a right triangle) to just plain silly (Would you rather eat a dead cricket or a live minnow? … which lead to the discovery that Thad has tried both.)

Visitng hours end at nine, but the Dalton boys are ridiculously good at manipulating rules, so out of the ten nights he's in the hospital, he only spends one alone. And that happened to be a particularly bad Wednesday when every single one of the boys rushed back to Dalton to study for tests or write essays or solve ridiculous physics problems. Even though he's grown up in and out of hospitals and spent at least eighty percent of his nights alone, he secretly loves that someone is there. Sebastian is amazingly good at badgering the nurses into giving him another dose of pain meds at five hours instead of six, and making sure they're the right pain meds. Trent shows up with episodes of _Switched at Birth_ and the practice translating the sign language together. He's learned a few good phrases from the show, although his favorite word (that he learned from Trent) is mosquito.

Jon is the most mindful of making sure things he needs are easily accessible without help.

On Thursday, Jeff his backpack and a panicked look on his face. Nick is stressed about something, either college applications or The Dreaded Hamlet Worksheet that Pedy just assigned, and isn't planning on sleeping. And none of the boys are letting Jeff spend the night alone. So, he ends up in the ugly blue vinyl chair.

They end up watching one of the Harry Potter movies that's on cable, because its Thursday and Thursday means movie night, even if they're stuck in the hospital without DVDs. Midway through, Jeff crawls up onto the bed. He sits, pertched at the foot of it, playing with the blanket and staring at the screen. He's wearing that same hoodie again, the one he seems to wear when he's stressed. It rides up as he leans against the bed, showing off the waistband of a pair of crocodile boxer briefs and a wide swath of skin covered in scratches.

He isn't sure how to broach the subject, but he decides he needs to. "Jeff, do you want to talk about what happened?"

Jeff shrugs and stares at the screen. His voice is flat again. "Is it really that obvious?"

"I'm a little hyper aware about cuts," he admits quietly. "And scars."

Jeff nods. "Look, most people aren't. Unless you've got scars on yours arms, and maybe your thighs, where they're expected, no one processes what they're looking at. You can have butterflies or names. You can have pen marks. You can wear a fucking rubber band. It doesn't matter. Scars are supposed to be white and they're supposed to be on your arms." The blond shrugs out of his sweatshirt and undershirt, and traces a finger along his shoulder blade. It looks like Wolverine decided to scratch the blond's back, with his claws out. "People see these. Multiple people see there. And they don't know what they are. And that's how I like it."

"But if you're having a …" He starts to insist on intervention, and then chokes on his words. He has secrets that he wants kept. "Why do you like it?"

Jeff shrugs. "A single act of violence. Because that's what happens when someone gets angry. There's violence that has to be dissipated. And, this might seem worse, because it leaves a scar. But, I promise, its not. I've done other things… before… worse things. Things that didn't leave a mark so no one would know when things were bad."

"But there are …" His voice trails off, thinking about his nightmares.

"Yeah, there are fucking better ways to deal, mate." Jeff agrees with the words that have not been said. "But punching a fucking pillow… it doesn't help. It's like I'm on a fucking journey. Have you ever taken a road trip?"

He shakes his head. He's taken plenty of cross-country journeys, a few even on the highways and byways, but never a proper road trip. His sisters aren't exactly the driving type, and there were special regulations about taking foster kids out of state.

"Shit me, we're going once you're sprung. They're epic. …But epic road trips aren't the point." Jeff forces himself to focus. "Okay, well, sometimes, you hit a crossroads, and you have to make a choice. Like going into Chicago, on the loop. It's a fucking nightmare. There are eight lanes across and everyone is driving too fast and you have to make a split second decision. I mean, yeah, you can come back sometimes and make the choice again, but if you pick wrong, you're gonna spend a couple of hours and some gas going back. Well, it's fucking like that. I'm at an intersection, and everybody is whipping past and I'm fucking scared that if I fuck it up, I'm gonna get in an accident by going to fucking slow, but I'm also gonna get lost, so I stay in the lane, and I just don't move. … Only the fucking lane I'm in, it's the one that pushes me over the fucking edge. And then I can't stop until I've gone all the fucking way."

"So, why not turn off and go someplace else?" He suggests, running with the metaphor. "Like… running or punching a pillow or something? Something not violent against yourself."

Jeff turns to face him, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around his leg so that his still-bare spine rounds up into a ball. Jeff laughs, and the sound is hallow, empty, and as dark as a stormy day. "Punching a pillow… it doesn't help. I just feel stupid. And running? Running is fucking violent, mate. 'Cause if you let me, I'll run, run, fucking run until I fall over because I'm so tired. … Have you ever been treated for exposure, mate? 'Cause I have. Three fucking times. 'Cause I'll run until I can't run anymore and then walk and then crawl and then there's no one there to carry me. I'm fucking alone." Jeff starts to shake, and his lip trembles. "And I fall and then I end up asleep in the fucking woods or once, by a fucking ocean. And then I get wet, and cold, and … it all goes downhill. So, no, I don't fucking run, because its more fucking dangerous but it doesn't show."

He's good at superficial interaction, bad at the deep stuff because he's never had to learn, but even he knows what needs to be done. He shifts so he can be as close to Jeff as possible without disrupting his hip. He manages to get a hand on Jeff's arm, and rub in gently.

Jeff is like a cat, responding to touch. He crawls up along the bed, and collapses against his friend.

"I can't fucking run." The blond's voice wobbles. "And Nick notices if I use the lighter. And it hurts him. It fucking hurts him, Hunt. And it hurts me. In a bad way. It makes things worse, brings up the intersection quicker and I can't fucking handle it. And I need to go do something so I can relieve my hurt so I can go help him."

His hospital gown is wet with Jeff's tears as the Aussie presses his face into his shoulder.

"I know people stop for their boyfriends!" Jeff sobs, tears and snot wetting his friend's hospital gown. "I know so many fucking people who can just … stop. Because their love is so strong. Shit me, I stopped for a while. And, I love Nick! I love him with everything! But, I can't stop this. I need thing… I need this… I'm a fucking failure, Hunt. I'm a fucking failure and I need this!"

He sighs. He wishes he could ask Jeff to stop for love and for Nick or for friendship or for his own sake. He wishes he could tell Jeff that he's strong, and make the blond believe it. Because his friend is strong and brave and successful. But, right now, Jeff is tired and scared and he isn't listening.

The blond starts shaking, shaking and sobbing. He rubs Jeff's back in careful circles until the shaking and sobbing stops. And then he turns off the TV, even as the Golden Trio creep through the dark halls of Hogwarts. He turns off the light and prays that Jeff won't move much during the night.

But, even though he's exhausted and struggling with the drugs in his system, he can't sleep. For the first time in a long time, he's honestly worried about a problem outside himself. Well, he worries about Jon. And he used to worry about Hunter. And sometimes Sarai or Lara, but that's the kind of quick, superficial worry that he gives all sorts of things. The weight of Jeff's confession catches in his chest, and leaves his body feeling heavy and cold.

He tries to think through the confession logically. Jeff can't stop. Jeff doesn't want to stop. It doesn't matter. Jeff thinks he needs it, so he needs it. He remembers watching Hunter drink a root beer every day, and swear that it gives him energy, until someone told him that it was caffeine free. The power of belief can beat physiology. Maybe it can defeat better judgment and psychology.

There's also the fact that if Jeff gave this up for Nick, it might endanger their relationship. Nick could turn into a token. Jeff could end up feeling dependent. He's seen more than his fair share of couples in dependent relationships, and while it works for some people, he's pretty confident that Nick and Jeff wouldn't be happy that way.

He won't help Jeff harm himself. He won't help Jeff hide it. But, he also won't tell Nick, and won't encourage Jeff to ask his boyfriend for help. It's something the Aussie needs to grow into himself.

He sighs, and settles himself again. He says a short prayer to whatever bit of the universe is listening that (1) Jeff not bump his leg and (2) the nurse don't wake the Aussie, and then lets out a contented sigh and goes to sleep.

_A/N: Another chapter close to my heart. … Blame all sorts of things for this. I want to put out the disclaimer once again that this is not intended to represent everyone's experience or feelings about self harm. Nor do I want to say that the choice to harm or not harm based on a relationship is good or bad. But, for this Jeff and this Nick, I think I'm more afraid of a co-dependent relationship than I am of anything else._

_This chapter is dedicated to about five people and a dog (in no particular order): Marie, Steph, Hannah, Lyra, Isabel and Allison._

_And, because I didn't manage an author's note last chapter, serious thanks to everyone who is sticking with this story as it continues to descend into the realms of "What the hell emerges from the muse's mind!?". Shout outs to __**Pi-on-a-skateboard**__, __**PenMagic**__, __**NiffAreForever**__, __**Youdontknowme06**__, __**B00kw0rm92**__, and __**Eraman**__._

_Comments, questions, concerns, critiques, or suggestions about what I should put up at my new desk are all welcome! –C65_


	40. Chapter 40

On Saturday, almost ten days into his stay, they start talking about his release. They want him moving and off the drainage tube for a few days. It's reasonably standard practice, especially for someone like him. He might be a frequent flier who doesn't want to rack up his expenses, but he doesn't want to leave only to return, either. So, he agrees to the plan.

Jon, Jeff and Nick are lounging with him, trying to work through various family week anxieties. "You don't understand! It's ridiculously frustrating!" Nick bursts out. "I don't understand why they do this!"

Jeff rolls his eyes. "'Cause they can't go everywhere with you, and you wouldn't want them to either, Three."

Jon shrugs. "Even if they _did_ go everywhere with you, they wouldn't see what you see, either."

Nick gets up and paces on the cold linoleum floor. "But, why do they have to be so conventional!" He kicks at an invisible spec of dust. "Why is everything so black and white?"

Jon's smile is grim. "Because not many people bother looking into the shadows long enough to let their eyes adjust. Shades of gray are hard to see when you're almost blinded."

Nick twitches his shoulder. "It just makes me… itchy!"

"I promise, it will be okay, babe." Jeff goes over and hugs his boyfriend. "And, I'm here to scratch your back any time."

He snorts. "You too are nauseatingly sweet. It's amazing Sebastian doesn't get comatose every time he's around you."

Jon frowns. "You'd better not say that to your roommate, or his dad."

"What's Seb's dad like?" He's genuinely curious about the man who raised his roommate. There has to be something twisted in Sebastian's family background for him to have children's music on his phone.

Nick shrugs. "He's a lawyer." As if that explains everything.

Jon shrugs. "My dad's a lawyer."

Jeff grins. "Your dad is awesome."

Jon sighs. "I guess." He rubs his thigh, vertically along the leg first, and then across the seam where they joined calf and hip when he was a child.

"Worried about the scan?" He voices the question.

Jon's words are halting. "They scheduled me for a biopsy. Tomorrow morning. My parents don't know… yet. I mean, they'll know pretty soon. And they'll probably pull me out of school."

That's probably not the part that Jon is worried about, but he doesn't admit to his suspicion. It's true that Jon will have a hard time keeping up with classes if he's constantly in and out of the hospital. It's difficult, but no prohibitive. And, it might me more comfortable and convenient to have privacy. But, he suspects that Jon is worried about harder things: isolation, another amputation, or death. These are fears he doesn't know how to comfort, since they are some of his own nightmares.

"Inpatient or Out?" Jeff runs a gentle hand along Jon's shoulder, but Beatz jerks away. The contact was more surprising than comforting, and it seems to lose a spring in the kinetic motion machine inside the boy. Jon is wound tight right now.

"It doesn't matter…" Nick tries for verbal comfort without much success.

He and Jon exchange a look. At some point, it will start to matter. At some point, it does matter. Will it be when the diagnosis comes back positive and its not possible to lie to yourself anymore? Will it be when others find out, and you can't lie to them either? Will it be when people talk in hushed tones and stop just as you enter the room? When you throw up at the thought of food? When all your hair falls out? When you're too busy being sick to live? When you lose a limb or end up disabled? When you get depressed… damaged?

Only Nick is naïve enough to believe that it won't matter…

A sharp rap on the door interrupts their conversation. The doctors have come to release him. A full team, the medical students following the attending like ducklings, come to observe.

Nick sees the line of doctors, and flees. Jeff glances between the bed and his boyfriend, and follows Nick out. This is a moment where it matters.

"I'm Dr. James." The attending physician comes over to shake his hand. Dr. James is a handsome woman in her early fifties. Her light brown hair is threaded with gray she makes no effort to hide, and her green eyes are serious behind red plastic frames.

"Hunter." The lie slides off his tongue with an ease that he's had with few names. His ownership of the identity is still coming. It comes with a sort of natural melancholy. He misses Kellen's roommate. But, he can be Hunter Clarington without the world coming apart.

"I'm Jon," Beatz offers his hand as well. Dr. James shakes it.

The medical team introduce themselves as well. He doesn't register any of the names when he sees catches one of the white-coated women. She's short and a little bit round, with girl next door features and mousy hair. She could be the twin of a woman who haunts places in his head that he avoids as much as possible. He prays that she will not be the one working on him. She is introduced as Dr. Chambers, although the name barely registers.

Unfortunately, Dr. Chambers is going to be practicing her drainage tube removal skills today. He knows his heart rate has jumped even without the stupid monitor telling him so.

Chambers looks over at Jon. "You should go. Hunter will be fine."

Alarm bells sound in his head. "He can stay." He is impressed at how steady his voice has remained.

She twitches back the sheet and blanket with her gloved hand, revealing his mostly naked body. The hospital gown does little to cover him, and he can't get anything over the pulleys and cords suspending his leg. So, the nurses to drape a cloth over his privates, but he misses the comfortable familiarity of his gray cotton boxer briefs. They're tight, supportive, close, and keep his modesty. The dirty washcloth doesn't seem to come close.

The attending notices what her fellow does not. "Should we get you a sedative, Mr. Clarington?" Dr. James has read enough of his chart to know that he speaks hospital jargon as well as most of her third year medical students.

He tries to think calming thoughts. He starts listing kings in his head, hoping the repetition of the names will calm him. Jon hovers, waiting for a request.

"I'm fine," he lies. His heart rate and blood pressure are back down to normal. Which is probably high for him, considering that they're still working on replacing the fluid he's lost. And he has naturally low blood pressure. Ridiculously low blood pressure. Not quite the kind that makes people faint for lack of sodium, but the kind that makes doctors and nurses happy with him when he goes for check ups.

The intern moves back in, and places a hand on his thigh. She pulls at the bandage, tugging the fine hairs on his leg with it. His heart starts racing again. She places a hand on the top of his leg, close to his pelvic bone. It's too damn close.

He has to stay in control. He takes deep, calming breathes and focuses on keeping his heart rate and blood pressure low. No one should know just how afraid he is. He squeezes Jon's hand, tightly.

The intern starts applying lidocane around the site. It stings. It feels like his leg is on fire up and down. It's starting to itch.

"Stop," he gasps. "Stop right now." He's sure he's shouting the words, but no one seems to hear him.

"Stop!" He repeats, frantically. "Stop!"

He doesn't want to go through with this. He can just stay here, where the nurses come and take care of him, and he's safe. They can leave the drainage tube in, for all he cares. He can stay wired up to the bed forever, if it means that _she _will not be the one performing the procedure.

"Stop." Jon's voice is firm and harsh. "Something isn't right. You need to stop."

"Mary, stop," Dr. James orders.

The name is like a knife to his heart. The intern looks like _her_. She has the same name. He can no longer quell his panic. He feels it rising, feels himself losing his connection to everything that makes him sane and safe. She is going to hurt him. She is going to humiliate him. He doesn't want this. He doesn't want this. He doesn't want this.

The intern stops applying the cold, burning ointment, but she keeps in contact.

He needs to get away. He needs to be somewhere safe. He doesn't care, but he needs her to stop touching him. He needs to escape before she can hurt him.

He rips his hand from Jon's. He struggles to sit up, to push himself off the bed. He forgets that he's tied down with wires and bolts. He forgets that his leg is still mangled. He just needs to get away.

The… Ma… She moves to put her hand on his chest to restrain him. The blood is rushing to his head, but his heart is trying to race out of his ribs.

"Could we please have a minute?" Jon's voice acts like a beacon, bringing him from the bright, red haze of panic and his plummeting blood pressure.

The team looks to the attending. "Go ahead. Get a nurse for me to assist, please."

Most of the students look disappointed. "Sandra," he manages to gasp.

Dr. James approaches cautiously, but she doesn't touch him. "Hunter?"

The name doesn't register. The world swims. "Don't touch me," he manages to gasp before everything goes bright, shining black.

He comes back to a swimming reality and exhaustion. He's been sedated before. They probably touched him. But, somehow, the knowledge that it was Dr. James and Sandra makes it okay. Or somewhat okay. And that Jon was watching. Because even though it terrifies him to admit it, Jon seems to have his best interests at heart. And the beatboxer isn't afraid to speak up.

And, at least his leg is down. Well, bandaged and down. Someone will bring his crutches and his wheelchair soon, and he'll go home to convulse. And, he'll be able to get away.

He sighs, and curls on his side to sleep again.

_A/N: First, I'm sorry about the three weeks (holy crap!) its taken me to post this. It's inexcusable for a piece I initially planned to update every 3 days. I'm also sorry about being incommunicado for this period. I've been up to my eyeballs in bad internet connections, extended family and poop._

_I want to thank everyone who has continued to read this as it gets longer, and more unwieldy. And, I promise Steph that we'll get the boys back to Dalton next time, where I have some big plans (cue my muse's evil laughter which is causing Trent to hide behind my vacuum and Sebastian to glare at me from the closet). _

_Shout outs to __**PenMagic**__, __**Erman**__, __**NiffAreForever**__, __**B00kw0rm92**__, and __**youdon'tknowme06**__._

_Questions, comments, concerns, suggestions or scolding all welcome. –C65 _


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